Va. officials try to solve 'white-nosed bat' mystery

BATH COUNTY

Breathing Cave is the name of a deep, dark hole in the ground off an unmarked mountain road here in western Virginia, a foreboding place mostly because of what lurks within - bats, hundreds of them.

Inside the mouth of the cave, the limestone walls are cool and moist. There is no light, only echoing creaks and clops of water drops - and the unnerving knowledge that somewhere down a blind tunnel ahead, creatures associated with blood and folklore and rabies are alive and close by.

As the sun goes down, the winged inhabitants silently emerge, the start of another night of feeding. But on a recent evening, a team of scientists and volunteers are waiting for them, equipped with nets and head lamps and a singular mission.

Led by Rick Reynolds, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the team is looking for clues into a mysterious disease that has killed hundreds of thousands of bats in a quickly expanding zone now stretching from upstate New York to Virginia.

After trapping bats in soft netting for hours in the dark, then judging their weight, sex, age and overall health by flashlight, it becomes clear something is not right.

Holding an especially lethargic and skinny bat - in his gloved hand to protect against bites - Reynolds peers into its little face.

"Do you feel all right?" he whispers, almost parentally. "You sure don't look too good, little guy."

Reynolds and other scientists worry that, if trends continue, entire populations could be wiped out, including endangered species such as the Indiana bat and the Virginia big-ear ed bat. Both can be found in the state, including some in Hampton Roads.

While bats often are portrayed in popular culture as evil and as symbols of the occult, they are critical to a balanced ecosystem, controlling mosquitoes and curbing other insects and pests that can damage crops and timber. Bats also are important links in the food chain, eaten by owls, raccoons, skunks and other small predators.

North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky are bracing for expected brushes with the disease later this year. They are gearing up scientific response teams, closing some caves, and limiting access to explorers and hikers who might unwittingly be contributing to the spread.

While researchers are not sure how the outbreak began, or how to stop it, they have dubbed the disease "white-nose syndrome." The name refers to a white, fuzzy fungus that grows on the nose, ears, joints and wings of sick bats.

Scientists do not think the disease harms humans. But in some caves in Northeastern states, it has wiped out up to 90 percent of resident bats.

Deaths typically occur in winter, when bats are supposed to be hibernating upside-down in caves and mines. Instead, the fungus tends to wake them early, while also sapping their body fat and immune strength.

When the bats awaken, research shows, they often are weak and compromised, their skin scarred with tiny holes and beige smudges. Some will rush into the freezing chill for food and never return. Others perish inside the cave, either from starvation or something else.

"The whole time I've been in wildlife biology, I've never seen anything like this," says Reynolds, whose career spans more than two decades in Virginia and elsewhere. "The speed and depth-of-impact of this thing is really amazing."

Breathing Cave is an hour west of Staunton in a remote part of Bath County. To get here, scientists need four-wheel-drive trucks to climb an old timbering road pocked by ruts and rocks. At night, it is easy to get lost.

They park in a thick forest near the top of a mountain ridge, then hike about five minutes down a makeshift path. The cave sits at the bottom of a grotto, where beds of leaves and mud and hidden rocks make access difficult and slippery.

It was here, in April, that scientists first confirmed white-nose syndrome in Virginia. Soon afterward, more tests determined that the fungus also was present in Clover Hollow Cave, in Giles County.

As of today, five caves have tested positive for white-nose syndrome out of 24 surveyed since last winter, according to the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which is leading an investigation involving multiple state and federal agencies as well as volunteers, academics and caving groups.

Virginia has about 4,000 caves in a long, mountainous chain from Winchester to Cumberland Gap. Officials say surveying and monitoring all of them would be almost impossible.

So far, few bat deaths have been documented in Virginia - "about 20 to 30," says Reynolds, the chief investigator. However, he cautions that it took two winters after the disease surfaced in Northeastern states before the death toll began to rise significantly.

Given the shaky economy and tight budgets, there is little money for the state monitoring program, so Reynolds often relies on volunteers and experts from other agencies to help him check suspect bats.

Near dusk on a late September eve, two aides assemble with Reynolds at a game department office in Verona, just outside of Staunton, to plot their strategy for the night.

Ernie Aschenbach, a department biologist, has driven from Richmond to assist, while Sumalee Hoskin, a federal wildlife expert, has traveled from Gloucester.

The group will stop at a shopping-center parking lot on the way to Breathing Cave to pick up a volunteer: Debbie Wright, a wildlife biologist originally from Arizona.

Reynolds gives them all baseball batting gloves, the protective gear of choice for handling bats.

"You can't work with bats without batting gloves, right?" Reynolds says with a smile.

They set up netting traps at the front of Breathing Cave as the sun begins to fade, and open a folding table where they will analyze the bats and record the results on lab sheets.

There are four main types of bats here, and around Virginia in general. The most common is the little brown bat, then the eastern pipistrelle, followed by the federally protected Indiana bat and Virginia big-ear ed bat.

The Virginia big-ear ed bat is the official state bat of Virginia, designated as such by the General Assembly in Richmond. It is one of the largest and rarest, and Reynolds does not expect to see one tonight.

Right away, the team sees problems with the bats they have captured to study. While some peep and wrestle to get free, others are small, underweight, quiet and tainted with mud-like splotches on their wings, ears and arm bones.

"Oh my gosh, he's got it, too!" says Wright, the wildlife biologist from Arizona, upon seeing more white dots on another bat. "They just are not what you'd expect to see and not how you'd expect them to act."

Suddenly, pay dirt: They have just collected an Indiana bat, an endangered species. Its woolly body is gray, and it appears fine and healthy.

"Never seen an Indiana here before," Reynolds says. "No smudges on him. That's good."

Then another surprise: a Virginia big-ear ed bat. It is twice the size of the others. Upon being handled, it rolls up its enormous ears into balls of coiled flesh, like a turtle withdrawing into its shell.

It, too, is clean and strong.

"It's fall, so everything is moving around," says Reynolds, noting that bats now are looking for mates and storing up fat for the winter. "This guy's probably out looking for food and a date."

In response to the white-nose crisis, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service advised in March that caves in affected states voluntarily close to explorers, known as cavers.

The service encouraged scientists and anyone visiting suspect caves to follow decontamination procedures for their clothes and gear to guard against inadvertently spreading the fungus.

"We are not placing a time limit on this cave advisory," the federal service wrote. "Scientists are working to determine the cause of WNS. We do not know when we will have answers to how WNS spreads."

In Virginia, all five caves that tested positive are on private property. Owners that used to allow access to cavers if they agreed to sign liability waivers have mostly curtailed access, Reynolds says.

At Breathing Cave, for example, cavers used to be able to sign a waiver at a mailbox left near the entrance. Now, the mailbox is closed. But caving continues, if less often, officials say.

Only one affected cave is a commercial venture - Endless Caverns, in New Market, north of Staunton.

Initially, an operator at the tourist spot refused to relay messages to managers when asked by a reporter about the disease.

Later, an official with Endless Caverns, Mindy Kirtley, responded by e-mail that management is aware of the disease and is working with the state.

"The cave is open for business 7 days a week as normal," Kirtley wrote.

Reynolds says Endless Caverns, like other commercial caves, is worried about a panic. Because the disease is not thought to affect humans, there should be no cause for alarm.

But biologically, he says, spores of the fungus could be transported by tourists who might visit another cave, and they should be alerted to decontamination procedures.

The prevailing theory is that the disease is spread mostly by the bats themselves, as they scurry to and from different caves, and that humans play a small role.

But the speed with which white-nose syndrome has moved has caught scientists off guard. It was first detected in 2006 in New York and within two years had taken hold in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and West Virginia.

Reynolds says Virginia investigators started looking in the winter of 2008 in the southwest corner of the state. Heading north, they found nothing until arriving at Breathing Cave in early 2009.

"We expected to see it in Northern Virginia first, but like everything with this, it showed up in Bath County, and much faster than we expected," he says. "But that's the story of white-nose syndrome so far - unpredictable and hard to figure out."

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com