We're So Bat: NYC's Nocturnal Creatures Are Making a Comeback

Hey everyone, I'm a reporter at Hell Gate. I recently joined Gotham Bat Conservancy on a "bat walk" in Prospect Park and learned all about the comeback story of the long-maligned NYC bat. You may or may not know (I didn't) that white nose syndrome has wiped out much of New York City's bat population since 2007. However, a passionate new community of bat lovers is helping them recover (including with some mythbusting). I'm dropping some of the story below, because I think they're cool, but if you want to read the whole thing you should just be able to click through the link and enter your email. Thanks! One recent Saturday night, a group of strangers stood huddled together on the south side of Prospect Park Lake, whispering to each other and peering through overhanging tree limbs into the sky. It was not long after sundown—dark apart from the light of the moon and quiet except for some park goers grilling several bays east—when suddenly, a woman in a green beanie broke rank, stabbed her finger toward the stars, and yelled: "Right there!" Above, a tiny figure danced against the night sky for about 30 seconds, striking a staccato rhythm that appeared both erratic and elegant. "YES! The bats are out! Sick!" exclaimed Roxanne Quilty, a co-founder of the four-year-old nonprofit Gotham Bat Conservancy, which promotes bat conservation in New York City. Nearby, two chattering tablets listened to the bat signals above through powerful microphones; they pitched down the soundwaves to a level audible to humans and, simultaneously, identified its species, which Quilty told the group was a big brown bat. Below, the two dozen participants of the conservancy's first "bat walk" of the year stood enthralled, before the skyward entity disappeared back into the darkness. Even 10 years ago, such a vision wasn't guaranteed. New York's local bat population is only now coming out the other side of a brutal pandemic along the East Coast, in which upwards of six million bats disappeared due to a deadly fungus that invades their caves, and causes them to starve to death during hibernation—a disease called White Nose Syndrome. Scientists believe that the fungus arrived from Eastern Europe and first got into a New York cave system in the Hudson Valley region around 2007, explained Ryan Mahoney, the other co-founder of the Gotham Bat Conservancy. "Since then," he said, "it has spread to all 48 states in the continental US. It's in Canada, and it is also in northern Mexico now." The fungus grows on the bats and irritates their skin, which wakes them up while they should be hibernating and in an extended period of low metabolism. The process of continually waking up during hibernation is so energy-wasting that the bats end up running through their fat stores before the winter is over, essentially starving to death. More than 90 percent of bats at hibernation sites across New York have died since the fungus first hit the state. Today's survivors have a unique gene, Mahoney said, that allows them to better manage disturbances to their metabolism. And now bat lovers like Mahoney and Quilty are trying to protect and restore those remaining members of the species: animals they see as underdogs in our local conservation story. "There's a lot of resources available to very charismatic kinds of animals. And then there are bats," Mahoney told Hell Gate. "I wanted to help create that movement that I've seen happen for so many other charismatic animals, because bats are actually very, very cute, and quite charismatic. Just like a New Yorker who is a little rough around the edges, but at the core, like a really great animal." submitted by /u/jessyagressy [link] [comments]