Amazing Beautiful – Wondrous Things … Animals, Kids, Inspiration, Fun : )

Wildlife biologists are extremely concerned and consider this a major problem.

The culprit has been identified as a white fungus that infests the nose, skin and wings of the bat.

The bats are found flying around in winter rather than hibernating, in extremely poor condition, severely dehydrated and starving.

One little bat was gamely trying to drink from snow to quench thirst. Unfortunately, he will undoubtedly perish as bats cannot survive during the day exposed to cold and light.

Biologists are puzzled as to why the bats are leaving their caves in droves in the daytime, severely malnourished, dehydrated and underweight.

“Bats are primary predators of vast numbers of insects that fly at night, and many such insects rank among North America’s most costly agricultural and forest pests.

These include cucumber, potato, and snout beetles; corn-borer, corn earworm, cutworm, and grain moths; leafhoppers; and mosquitoes.

A single little brown bat can catch more than 1,200 mosquito-sized insects in an hour, and the 25 million Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) that formerly occupied Eagle Creek Cave in Arizona consumed over 250 tons of insects nightly, the majority of which were agricultural pests.

A colony of Mexican free-tailed bats living in the old Orient Mine in Colorado consumes nearly two tons of insects nightly, largely moths.

Just one of the many moths that such bats eat, the corn earworm moth, attacks a wide variety of crops, from corn and cotton to tomatoes and pumpkins.

Since each female moth is capable of laying hundreds of eggs, as few as 100 can force a farmer to spray a large area of crop lands.

Illustrative of the impact that even small colonies of bats can have, just 150 big brown bats can eat sufficient cucumber beetles each summer to protect farmers from 33 million of these beetles’ root worm larvae, pests that cost American farmers an estimated billion dollars annually.

Long-nosed (Leptonycteris curasoae and L. nivalis) and long-tongued bats (Choeronycteris mexicana) are believed to be important pollinators for some 60species of agave plants and to serve as both pollinatorsand seed dispersers for dozens of species of columnar cacti, including organ pipe and saguaro, which rank among the southwestern desert’s most familiar and ecologically important plants.

Loss of these bats could further jeopardize these already declining plants, harming an entire ecosystem.

Bats are primary pollinators and seed dispersers for many of the most ecologically important plants of the desert Southwest. This lesser long-nosed bat is about to pollinate a saguaro cactus.

Mexican free-tailed bats rank among North America’s most valuable wildlife, consuming enormous quantities of insect pests each summer night.”

Full Article Here:
http://www.batcon.org…batsmines_09-16.pdf
(Right Click and Choose ‘Save Target As’ to Download Entire Article)

A large library of Bat Images:
http://www.batcon.org…task=results

More Information
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/wns2.html

Comprehensive Information:
http://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/45088.html

Video of Endangered Species Biologist,
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with Bats
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/wns2.html

Images of Bat Situaton
http://www.fws.gov/northeast/wnspics.html

A Stunning and Beautiful Slide Show of Bat Cave Images
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/10/05/
nyregion/20081005_Bats_index.html

“We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce green fire dying in her eyes.”

I realized then, and have known ever since, that there was something new to me in those eyes – something known only to her and to the mountain.

I was young then, and full of trigger-itch; I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves would mean hunters’ paradise.

But after seeing the green fire die, I sensed that neither the wolf nor the mountain agreed with such a view.

Since then I have lived to see state after state extirpate its wolves.

I have watched the face of many a newly wolfless mountain, and seen the south-facing slopes wrinkle with a maze of new deer trails.

I have seen every edible bush and seedling browsed, first to anaemic desuetude, and then to death. I have seen every edible tree defoliated to the height of a saddlehorn.

Such a mountain looks as if someone had given God a new pruning shears, and forbidden Him all other exercise.

In the end the starved bones of the hoped-for deer herd, dead of its own too-much, bleach with the bones of the dead sage, or molder under the high-lined junipers.

I now suspect that just as a deer herd lives in mortal fear of its wolves, so does a mountain live in mortal fear of its deer.

And perhaps with better cause, for while a buck pulled down by wolves can be replaced in two or three years, a range pulled down by too many deer may fail of replacement in as many decades.

So also with cows.

The cowman who cleans his range of wolves does not realize that he is taking over the wolf’s job of trimming the herd to fit the range. He has not learned to think like a mountain.

Hence we have dustbowls, and rivers washing the future into the sea.

We all strive for safety, prosperity, comfort, long life, and dullness.

The deer strives with his supple legs, the cowman with trap and poison, the statesman with pen, the most of us with machines, votes, and dollars, but it all comes to the same thing: peace in our time.

A measure of success in this is all well enough, and perhaps is a requisite to objective thinking, but too much safety seems to yield only danger in the long run.

Perhaps this is behind Thoreau’s dictum: In wildness is the salvation of the world.

Perhaps this is the hidden meaning in the howl of the wolf, long known among mountains, but seldom perceived among men."

~ Aldo Leopold, Thinking Like a Mountain

Thanks to Suzanne Stone, MyYellowStone Wolves
http://myyellowstonewolves.typepad.com/myw/2009/02/wolf-makes-it-all-the-way-to-colorado.html

More Information:
http://www.westernwolves.org/