Would you think that bats, small flying mammals, have a large impact on our country's financial well-being? Well, its true. Two factors are having an enormous impact on the lives of bats in the United States- wind turbines and White Nose Syndrome. The picture to the right shows five Little Brown Bats infected with White Nose Syndrome. Although it is unknown how many bats have been killed by wind turbines, some scientists estimate that by 2020 wind turbines may kill 33,000 to 111,000 annually in the only the Mid-Atlantic Highlands. If this estimate is accurate and is true of other places that house wind turbines, we may lose countless bats in North America.
White Nose Syndrome is an infection of the skin that begins while a bat hibernates. It is a fast spreading disease that has already quickly made its way from Canada to Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Missouri, and without prevention or successful attempts at containing and ceasing the spread of this infection may result in extinction of some native North American bats (such as the Little Brown Bat pictured above).
How serious is the impact of White Nose Syndrome? In one word- devastating. We as Americans rely heavily on bats to consume many of the pests and insects that would typically damage and kill our agriculture. "In fact, the researchers estimate the value of bats to the agricultural industry is roughly $22.9 billion a year, with the extremes ranging as low as $3.7 and $53 billion a year." (Science Daily) It is obvious that we as avid consumers of plants, vegetables, and other agriculture need to do something to stop this infection from spreading onto new colonies of bats. Researchers are currently urging policy-makers to do something about this atrocity now because waiting the problem out may prove costly.
This problem, relating bats in North America to the United States economy exhibits one of the largest principles of ecology: interconnectedness. Every animal, every plant, every organism, and every environment are all interconnected. The actions of one organism (or many) has an impact on something and many things within its environment. It is so interesting that one species of bats has such an economic impact on the daily lives of Americans. This further proves that our interests as humans are always being impacted by the interests of other animals and organisms. It is up to us, as the leading and most superior organism on the planet to protect all others, for now we should know that one little bat may have a large impact on our daily lives. By protecting the organisms that surround us daily, we are in return protecting ourselves.
Photo Credit: Al Hicks, USGS
Article: Science Daily, April 1st, 2011:
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