New West Feature

Eastern Bat Disease Brings New Regulations to the West

By Matthew H. Davis, 6-28-11

	Hibernating bats infected with white-nose syndrome. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Forest Service.

Last month the U.S. Forest Service granted short-term access to 17 caves in Colorado’s White River National Forest. The move granted access to the caves for the National Speleological Society’s (NSS) annual convention.

Caves in the area—near Glenwood Springs, 150 miles west of Denver—have been closed since last July to prevent the spread of white-nose syndrome, a disease that has decimated bat populations in the eastern United States.

The disease causes a fungus to grow on the wings, nose and ears of infected bats and disrupts normal hibernation. Infected bats arouse too frequently during the winter, which leads to starvation.  Since being discovered in 2006 in New York, scientists have observed the disease in 17 states and four Canadian provinces and estimate it has killed more than a million bats.

But what the short-term permits and blanket cave closures signal are the levels of precaution the poorly understood disease has raised, leaving conservationists and the caving community with different viewpoints on what should be done. 

One of the leading groups sounding the alarm to close caves in the Western United States is the Tucson, Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity. The conservation group pushed for added safeguards for the NSS’s permits and also blanket closures for the entire West.

“I think if they were going to allow cave access at all, because there’s a standing closure order, (the Forest Service) has done a reasonable job protecting bats and reducing the risk of the disease being transported,” said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity.

The NSS and the Forest Service agreed on several stipulations for cave access—including strict decontamination guidelines, a ban on using gear from afflicted areas and allowing access only to select caves with limited or no bat populations. 

The NSS was more than happy to oblige, said Dave Lester, chairman for the convention, but pointed out that caving was only a small part of the group’s plan for the annual event. It will also be a place to discuss caving exploration and studies from around the world, among other topics, he said. 

White-nose syndrome research is still in the early stages and the question of how the disease is spread remains unanswered. Bat-to-bat transmission still appears to be the most likely cause. The disease has been observed in caves in New England with limited human access. 

Still, humans could have the potential to transmit the disease, Matteson said. She cited several long-distance jumps the disease has made that don’t reflect bats’ normal migration patterns. 

“I think the most protective thing would be for folks to stay out of caves,” Matteson said.

As for the impact cave closure has on groups like the NSS, Lester said it has been devastating and has halted many of the group’s underground studies. In many ways, the NSS and the Center for Biological Diversity share a common goal regarding white-nose syndrome, Lester said, but their approaches differ.

“The NSS believes the best way to approach this is to do the science and understand what’s going on,” he said and pointed out that the work the NSS has done with local agencies was wiped out by the federally mandated closure.

“The caving community was unhappy—not that it came down from one of the local agencies that we’ve been working with—but that it was a national mandate,” Lester said. “That was politics, and we’re trying to deal with science.”

Representatives from the White River National Forest agree, but as Scott Fitzwilliams, the White River National Forest Supervisor, said, the closures are necessary. 

“I completely understand where the caving community is coming from. They have been more than cooperative, engaged and understanding throughout the entire process, but with the little information we had regarding the disease, we had to take a dramatic step,” Fitzwilliams said. “Hopefully, as we learn more about the disease, we can get back to a more local approach.”

At this point, the Forest Service throughout the region is moving forward as if the closure will stick, Fitzwilliams said, and pointed out that, without a solid understanding of the disease, the future of caving on public land in the West is an unknown. 

In recent years, the NSS has been one of the most active groups in the country to push for white-nose syndrome research—through members’ work and research sponsorship—and has also encouraged congressional action, Lester said.

On the other hand, the Center for Biological Diversity has also made efforts to provide protections for bats. The group is using petitions to pressure Congress to fund a $10.8 million white-nose syndrome study and to pass the Wildlife Disease Emergency Act. The Save Our Bats campaign also seeks to pressure federal and state land managers to close access to all caves and abandoned mines in the Western United States.

At the end of May, the Center also threatened to sue federal land management agencies if steps weren’t taken to bring Eastern cave regulations to Western states. The 30-day window for the agencies to act ended on June 25.

The Bureau of Land Management will also release an order about what it plans to do in the coming days and the Forest Service in Montana will announce its plans as well. 

The Center’s pressure on federal agencies may be working. Last Friday, the House Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on the disease and federal land managers voiced their concerns with white-nose syndrome.

“We understand the impacts closures are having, and will continue to have, on the recreating public,” Joe Peña, the Forest Service associate deputy chief, said at the hearing. “We will continue evaluating these decisions as new information and science becomes available, with the intent of balancing greater access to caves while striving to maintain healthy bat populations.”

“By acting now we hope to substantially delay the westward spread enough for the science to inform us on more effective ways to manage and contain the fungus,” Peña said.

At the heart of the debate, of course, are the bats—neither group wants to deny that.  A study published earlier this year in the journal “Science” estimated that the value of insect-eating bats to agriculture in the United States was $3.7 billion to $53 billion per year. 

But now, with the blanket closures on Forest Service lands in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota and possibly Montana, and the pending closures on western BLM lands, Lester said cavers are going to have to wait it out.

“Nature will bring it here, if it is to be,” he said. 

Matthew H. Davis is an intern for New West.

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