The Daily Gleaner from May 22, 2013<\/a> written by Laverne Stewart.<\/p>\nYou can call her bat girl. An eight-year-old Harvey Elementary School student is doing something to help prevent the extinction of the brown bat in New Brunswick.<\/p>\n
Dara Glaspy learned the bats are near extinction when her teacher, Cheryl McKillop, read a newspaper article to her class about the problem last fall.<\/p>\n
The bats are dying from a fast-spreading disease called white-nose syndrome. The fungus that causes the disease has decimated the bat populations. Not harmful to humans and other creatures, the fungus spores that cause the syndrome have devastated bat populations throughout the U.S. and Eastern Canada.<\/p>\n
Once Dara heard about the problem, she was determined to learn more. She started a research project on the brown bat and the disease. Since then, McKillop said, she\u2019s been looking at ways to bring the problem to the attention of her class and the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard that bats were becoming extinct and I really like bats. They\u2019re cute and they eat a lot of insects. They help us. If we didn\u2019t have bats, there would be an overpopulation of insects, and bugs eat crops. Bats are important to farmers and a lot of other people,\u201d Glaspy said.<\/p>\n
Dara and her father built a bat house from a design they found on the Internet, McKillop said. Together the girl and her teacher talked about taking a few orders for bat houses and making some money from them so it could be donated to bat researchers at the New Brunswick Museum.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe wants people to be aware of having a bat house on their property. She can\u2019t supply all the needs, but she wants people to be able to build their own or purchase their own. I\u2019m actually her first customer,\u201d McKillop said.<\/p>\n
Glaspy said she hopes to raise $100 to send to the museum\u2019s head of natural sciences, biologist Don McAlpine, to help pay for research expenses.<\/p>\n
She said it might be possible to save the bats from extinction, but it will take everyone\u2019s effort if they are to survive.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople need to stay out of caves where they hibernate in the winter. People also need to be building bat houses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
McAlpine said he thinks it\u2019s unusual for someone Dara\u2019s age to have taken such a proactive interest in environmental issues, let alone bats, \u201cwhich often have a high yuck factor for the general public.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIf there is any hope that the many pressing environmental issues facing us today will be resolved, that hope lies largely with the Daras of the world. The problem is that there just aren\u2019t enough Daras out there at the moment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Her donation of $100 is one of many small donations McAlpine and other researchers at the museum use to fund the bat project, which requires more than $60,000 each year to run, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery little bit helps\u2026 If more of us spent time even thinking about these problems, that would be a great start to really grappling with them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McAlpine said Dara\u2019s $100 donation could be used to pay for travel expenses to caves and mines where bat population surveys are done. It could also be used to pay for materials needed to do cultures of the fungi that live on bats,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are looking for fungi that might interact with the white-nose fungus. So every little bit helps.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an email to Dara\u2019s teacher, McAlpine invited the girl and her parents to come to the New Brunswick Museum in Saint John to see the research on white-nose syndrome and to introduce her to research associate Karen Vanderwolf.<\/p>\n
Vanderwolf said the risk of extinction of the brown bat is high, and she praised the girl\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s incredible. It\u2019s so nice to hear that young people are getting involved in this. To have someone show this level of interest is really exceptional. I hope I get to meet her,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Vanderwolf said when Glaspy arrives at the museum, she will show her some of her bat research data.<\/p>\n
Vanderwolf spends a lot of time going into caves and counting bat populations in the winter while they\u2019re in hibernation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started before white-nose syndrome came into the province and we have documented each year how they\u2019re declined. They\u2019ve really taken a huge hit\u2026 We had over 7,000 bats a few years ago and now we\u2019re down to 79 this winter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
By next year, researchers such as Vanderwolf and McAlpine said the brown bat will likely be extinct in the region \u2013 the fastest extinction of a mammal group in the province.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best hope for them is that some of the bats will have a natural immunity (to white-nose syndrome) and that the population will recover over a period of time. In the meantime what we need to do is to reduce mortality through the life cycle for bats as much as we can,\u201d McAlpine said.<\/p>\n
If the brown bat has any hope of survival, everyone needs to get involved, he said. In the summer, people can help by not disturbing bat maternity colonies. Hot attics and barns are favourite roosting places for female bats and their babies. This is why it\u2019s important to leave then alone until their offspring are able to leave the roost, Vanderwolf said.<\/p>\n
Erecting bat houses could also help, she said, because it will give male bats a place to roost in summer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey will leave in late fall and then you can seal up any holes. There\u2019s a lot of documentation on the proper procedures of humanely excluding bats from homes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
If you block the holes before the bats are ready to leave for their winter hibernation locations, you will end up with rotting bats in your attic and other buildings on your property, she said. The bats and their young will leave for their winter home in late August.<\/p>\n
Bats spend their winters in caves and abandoned mines. Vanderwolf said people shouldn\u2019t visit these areas because it\u2019s detrimental to disturb hibernating bats. It\u2019s also important to stay away from caves and abandoned mines so fungus spores aren\u2019t spread from one location to another, she said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s believed the white-nose fungus was spread from Europe to New York by travelers who picked the fungus up on their boots while exploring bat caves and unknowingly spread it once they returned to the U.S. From there it quickly spread to other states and Canada, she said.<\/p>\n
Also gone in large numbers are the northern long-eared bat and the tricolored bat.<\/p>\n
The near extinction of the brown bat spells trouble for the environment especially for the agricultural community and forest industry, which counts on these insect eaters to control the populations of insects, Vanderwolf said.<\/p>\n
She and McAlpine aren\u2019t optimistic about the bats\u2019 future in the province, but they are encouraged by Dara\u2019s efforts.<\/p>\n
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[PHOTO THE DAILY GLEANER FREDERICTON & REGION, MAY 22, 2013] This summer I will have a chance to meet Dara Glasby, a grade 2 student from New Brunswick. Dara\u2019s passion…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[87,170,654,169,195,88,89],"class_list":["post-346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-endangered-species","tag-bats","tag-don-mcalpine","tag-help-the-bats","tag-karen-vanderwolf","tag-new-brunswick-museum","tag-white-nose-syndrome","tag-wns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2790,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346\/revisions\/2790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.cwf-fcf.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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