The mysterious White Nose Syndrome has wiped out over a million bats in the last three years. Now scientists are warning that action needs to be taken to stop the spread of this deadly fungus, or we might be “at the vanguard of an environmental catastrophe,” according to Tim King, a conservation geneticist with the US Geological Survey in West Virginia, in the Boston Globe. Because the fungus poses no direct risk to humans, resources allocated to combat it have been relatively limited. But if that doesn’t change, it could prove to be a huge mistake in as little as 10 years. While bats might be perceived as scary nocturnal creatures, they actually serve a huge ecological function, including controlling the population of disease-carrying mosquitoes and crop-killing beetles. Read more here.
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