The U.S. After a successful lawsuit by a coalition of wildlife organizations, Fish and Wildlife Service published Wednesday a proposed rule to upgrade the status of northern longeared bats from threatened and endangered.
White-nose syndrome, a fungal infection first discovered in New York in 2006, has decimated the bat’s range. Sixteen years later, the disease has led to a 99 percent population drop.
The service declared the bat endangered in 2015. This prompted a lawsuit from a coalition consisting of Defenders and Wildlife, Center for Biological Diversity and Sierra Club.
The service argued that the bat didn’t reach the endangered status due to the role of disease rather than human activity in population loss.
In January 2020 Judge Emmet Sullivan of the District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. He stated that the services decision did no proper accounting for human activity and did not explain why such dramatic population loss did not warrant protections.
Sullivan ordered that the Fish and Wildlife Service make a decision about the bats’ status by December at the end of March, instead of the three to four years it had requested.
Jane Davenport (a senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife), stated that this proposed endangered listing recognizes how human activities and the plague of white nose syndrome are pushing the species to their limits. While scientists race against the clock to save bats suffering from white-nose syndrome (white-nose syndrome), the Service must immediately protect the remaining population from human-caused threats.
Learn more about the rule proposal here.