White-Nose Syndrome found in county

For the first time, the deadly bat disease White-Nose Syndrome has hit Saline County, according to a press release from Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

White-Nose Syndrome has killed millions of bats in North America and has recently been found in Saline, Union, Johnson and Jackson counties. Tests conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin found five bats submitted from those counties were positive for the disease. These are the first confirmed records in these counties. The disease was first discovered in Illinois in 2013 in Hardin, LaSalle, Monroe and Pope Counties.

Cave Hill near Equality was gated on a trial basis years ago to protect bats. Later, all caves on public land were officially closed - state property in 2010, federal property in 2009 - in an attempt to prevent the spread by cave explorers tracking potentially infected mud from cave to cave. WNS is known to be transmitted primarily from bat to bat, but spores of Pseudogymnoascus destructans, the non-native fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, may be unintentionally carried between caves and abandoned mines by people on their clothing, footwear and caving gear.

White-nose syndrome is not known to affect people, pets, or livestock, but is harmful or lethal to hibernating bats, killing 90 percent or more of some species of bats in caves where the fungus has persisted for a year or longer, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The name of the disease refers to the white fungal growth often found on the noses of infected bats.

White-nose syndrome was first detected in New York State in 2006 and has killed more than 5.7 million cave-dwelling bats in the eastern half of North America. Bats with WNS have been confirmed in 25 states and five Canadian provinces. White Nose Syndrome monitoring in Illinois is done in collaboration by University of Illinois - Prairie Research Institute, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Forest Service and the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Bats play an important role in the environment, with individual bats preying on thousands of night-flying insects daily. Bats provide valuable insect pest control.

For more information, visit: www.whitenosesyndrome.org.