Bats, Not Easy to Love, Dying Daily by Thousands

This is a continuation of an earlier post about bats.  The title is from an article published in 2013. The article states "......these are hard days for these peculiar animals, because they face mass extinction from a disease called White Nose Syndrome and every night thousands of are killed by energy-producing wind turbines that conservationists, economists and politicians hope will reduce this nation's need for foreign oil. Every solution to this perplexing energy problem comes with a downside, and wind turbines are no exception. A new study from the University of Colorado, Denver, estimates that 600,000 bats were killed by wind turbines last year alone."

The problem is similar to that faced by honey bees. Bees are also under stress and there is evidence that some bee extinctions are also related to human activities.

Why should anyone care about bat fatalities? "According to Bat Conservation International of Austin, Texas, the "low end estimate" of the value of bats to U.S. agriculture is at least $3.7 billion. Cotton farmers alone are saved about $74 per acre."

Let's not also ignore the millions of mosquitoes that are taken out of the air by bats.

There are several twists to this problem with wind turbines. For one thing, collisions aren't the problem. Spinning wind turbine blades create pressure changes in their vicinity. According to Erin Baerwald of the University of Calgary. This "sudden but subtle drop in atmospheric pressure from the blades causes internal hemorrhaging, a condition known as barotrauma. Bats are more vulnerable to barotrauma than birds, according to Baerwald, and bat fatalities far outnumber bird fatalities at most sites, so this has become "a bat issue, not a bird issue.""

The other interesting thing about the wind turbine problem is there is an easy solution. See the article for the explanation.

Finally, our government has take up the mantle of saving birds, but generally ignores the problems and stresses on bats. Perhaps a lack of education or too many horror movies which portray bats as vampires. Besides, there aren't any "save the bats" groups in every neighborhood, while birds get their own magazines, societies and so on.

Here's a link to the original article:

http://abcnews.go.com - wind turbine massacres of bats