Fox 31 spoke with Jackie Entz, the education coordinator at Chehaw Park, who said luckily the kinds of bats that live in or migrate through our region aren't cave bats so this particular syndrome isn't necessarily something we should be worried about.
/ Courtney Highfield
ALBANY, GA --
In our facebook story of the day you wanted to know if southwest Georgia should be worried about white-nose syndrome affecting our bat population.
White-nose syndrome is a disease that has killed millions of bats on the East Coast of the United States. The Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the National Park Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife service announced yesterday that the first cases of the syndrome in Georgia were confirmed.
Officials defined the syndrome as "a white fungus often found on the muzzles, ears and wings of infected bats. White-nose, or WNS, spreads mainly through bat-to-bat contact. There is no evidence it infects humans or other animals. But spores may be carried cave-to-cave by people on clothing or gear."
FOX 31 spoke with Jackie Entz, the education coordinator at Chehaw Park, who said luckily the kinds of bats that live in or migrate through our region aren't cave bats so this particular syndrome isn't necessarily something we should be worried about. Entz did say however that we should be worried about the syndrome as a whole because bats are such an important part of our ecosystem.
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