A fungus that causes the deadly white-nose syndrome in bats has been detected in Arkansas for the first time and has prompted agencies to keep caves in public possession closed.
“It’s the fungus that has been detected, but the disease is not in any bats yet,” Joan Ellison, spokesman for the state Department of Parks and Tourism, said Monday.
A news release from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission on Monday stated that a low level of the fungus Geomyces destructans had been detected in a cave at Devil’s Den State Park and in a private cave in Baxter County.
No bat deaths from white nose syndrome are known to have occurred in Arkansas, according to the news release.
One swab from a wall in the Devil’s Den cave taken in January was found to be positive for the fungus. Five swabs from bats and two from the cave wall in the private Baxter County cave taken in February 2012 tested positive, the release stated.
Commission spokesman Keith Stephens said Monday that while the fungus was found on the bats, the bats did not have white-nose syndrome.
The swabs from the private cave initially were not thought to be positive for the fungus. But the fungus showed up in microscopic amounts in the samples when they were reanalyzed this year using a more sensitive technique, the release stated.
The Parks Department closed the Devil’s Den caves in 2009 and 2010 and the War Eagle Cave at Withrow Springs State Park in 2010.
The commission in March 2010 closed all 83 caves on land it controls in four wildlife management areas around the state, the news release stated.
“We’ll be returning to these sites this winter to see if the fungus has caused the development of white-nose syndrome and will be surveying caves near them to track its spread,” said Blake Sasse, non-game mammal program leader for the commission.
Parks Director Greg Butts said in the news release that protecting the state’s natural resources is part of the mission of the commission, Parks Department, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He said the agencies were working together “to do all we can to protect Arkansas’ caves and the bat species that inhabit them.”
The caves were closed in 2009 and 2010 as precautions to protect them from the possibility of contamination from white-nose syndrome, according to the news release.
Ann Froschauer, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said Monday that humans could inadvertently spread the fungus by tracking it on their hiking boots, for example, from a contaminated area or cave into an uncontaminated cave.
She couldn’t say Monday that humans caused the contaminati0n of the Arkansas caves. More likely, she said, it was through the natural movement of bats from one area to another that brought the fungus to the state. She said the fungus already had been found in Missouri and Tennessee.
“We’re not really surprised the fungus is in Arkansas,” she said. “It’s been moving pretty steadily westward.”
She said the U.S. service’s map showing the spread of the fungus was updated Monday to include the Arkansas contamination locations. The map can be found online at whitenosesyndrome.org.
White-nose syndrome is associated with large rates of bat mortality in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic United States, the news release stated. Since the summer of 2006-07, bat population declines ranging from 80 percent to 97 percent have been documented at surveyed hibernation areas that have been most severely affected. Although exact numbers are difficult to determine, biologists estimate that losses may exceed 5 million bats since 2007.
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 07/30/2013