At the Colorado Bat Working Group meeting on 17 September 2024, data presented by Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) showed that White Nose Syndrome (WNS) has been spreading rapidly among bats in Colorado and killing many of them, particularly Little Brown bats (myotis lucifugus). Specifically, of 58 submitted bats that CPW veterinarians tested between February and May 2024, hald of them (29) were WNS positive: 26 of the 34 little brown bats, and also 2 big brown bats (eptesicus fuscus) and 1 fringed myotis (myotis thysanodes). The Pd fungus is doing massive and usually fatal necrotic damage to the bats’ wing tissues.
The bats tests were all from along the Front Range (Boulder, Larimer, Douglas and El Paso counties), mostly collected either from bat rehabilitators or from people calling CPW to report seeing sick bats in yards, along trails, etc. The range of reports may be biased heavily just by the Front Range being where there is a dense population of people to see the sick bats and report them to CPW.
WNS continues to spread through the western US. From the maps shown at the WNS Response Group site, it appears that the only states remaining now without Pd or WNS reports may be Oregon, Nevada, and Florida.
Recommended WNS decontamination procedures for cavers were updated in March.
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