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News » Bat disease getting closer to Wis.
June 14, 2012
A fungus that causes a fatal disease in bats is getting very close to Wisconsin, and officials are asking cave explorers to thoroughly clean their clothes, to avoid spreading the disease.
DNR bat biologist Dave Redell says officials in Iowa found bats with white-nose syndrome in a northeast Iowa cave, just 30 miles from the Wisconsin border.
He says the disease already killed six million bats in the U.S. and Canada, and it's very contagious.
Redell says the disease is fatal more than 70 percent of the time.
Redell says bats eat a lot of insects. He says bats save farmers up to $1.5 billion a year in potential crop loss, and other expenses that they would incur, because of the bugs that bats eat. |
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