Many many bat populations are in serious decline! It is very scary! Most of the recent decline is caused by white nose syndrome, which I see is what the article was about. The white nose syndrome doesn't actually kill them, what it does is cause them to itch and wake up more often than a bat without white nose syndrome. The white nose syndrome bats are waking up every 4-5 days, probably because the white nose syndrome is irritating and they scratch at it, whereas bats without the fungus are waking up every 6-7 days (I think those numbers are right, it was a while back I took the class on it, so could be off a little). So, the bats with white nose syndrome are waking up more, which is energetically expensive to do and they are burning through their fat reserves well before winter is over. So, they are starving and then either just crawl away from the group to die or will fly out in search of food and drop dead somewhere else. There have been places in PA where there have been thousands of bats laying dead outside of caves. It is very sad. And I see in the article it has hit Ohio 😡.
They thought at first that cave explorers were spreading the fungus from colony to colony by going in one cave, getting the fungus on their shoes then another time going to another cave and spreading it that way. They made really strict rules to prevent that but it kept spreading. Then the bats were studied and it turns out they are likely spreading it themselves because of population overlap. It can transfer from bat to bat, so they have probably been spreading it themselves 🙁.
I am a rehabber and got my Rabies Vector Permit just to be able to take in bats. I LOVE bats, I think they are cool and so important to the ecosystem. So far I have gotten 2 little browns. Unfortunately, both were at death's door when they arrived 🙁. The last one just came in 2 days ago and died overnight. The finder left the bat out on the ground in his yard for 2 weeks before calling. He must have come out of hibernation on a warm day and didn't head back in time and went into torpor. It has been getting up to the 30s during the day and 20s at night, plus it has snowed. Poor bat was out there through it all. He didn't have enough energy left to wake up and eat and just the extra energy of warming up and waking up did him in.
