An epidemic has wiped out millions of bats across the U.S. and Canada

To save this species, scientists must quickly find the disease's weakness.
By Logan Ward
January 3, 2011

Tucked into the woods near the top of Rattlesnake Hill, in eastern Pennsylvania, is a 19th-century iron-ore mine. Heavy steel slats bar the mine's gaping black mouth. Beyond a hinged gate, down a rubble slope, where the entry tunnel opens into a dark chamber, Pennsylvania Game Commission biologist Greg Turner aims the beam of his headlamp upward, illuminating hundreds of bats clinging to the ceiling. Moisture beading on their brown fur glistens as Turner inspects each one, searching for signs of a killer.

During a normal year, an estimated 10,000 bats winter in Durham Mine, one of the state's largest hibernacula. The bars have kept humans out for 16 years, but they are useless against a new and far more sinister threat, a condition known as white-nose syndrome, or WNS. In a mere season or two, WNS can wipe out nearly every bat in a ­colony. Internet forums used by cavers and wildlife conservationists bristle with doomsday proclamations such as this: "Whatever is going on, it is evil, like the black plague. Birds are now ripping the bats apart… like something from the Book of Revelation." the rest image

Bizarre blackbird, fish deaths spread: 500 birds dead in Louisana; 100 tons of fish die in Brazil