Passport to Texas

This is Passport to Texas

Texas boasts healthy bat populations. Bats living in other parts of the country are not as lucky due to something called:

02— Pseudogymnoascus destructans.

Commonly called White Nose Syndrome, the disease, caused by a fungus—which originated in Europe—first appeared in a cave in New York in 2006. Bat biologist, Tara Poloskey.

19— What happens is it grows on the bat during hibernation when they aren’t cleaning themselves. And then it makes them wake up; every time a bat wakes up in hibernation, they use valuable resources. And they only have a certain amount of fat reserves to get them through the winter. And so it keeps waking them up until they eventually starve. Or they are so dehydrated that they die.

The disease has killed an estimated 6-million bats in the US. Reported in both Oklahoma and Arkansas, White Nose Syndrome is on Texas’ doorstep.

12— This winter, Texas Parks and Wildlife will be doing surveys in Texas for White Nose, and really cranking up our White Nose monitoring and education, and really trying to spread the word about it.

We have tips for preventing spread of White Nose fungus at www.passportotexas.org.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration program supports our series, and funds diverse conservation projects in Texas.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.