« | Home | »

Let Me Tell You ’bout The Bats And The Bees

Topics: Clean & Green | Add A CommentBy admin | September 6, 2010

Because this is one environmental topic that should bee generating more buzz.


Yes, bats pollinate too. Source

You may have heard about the massive die-off of bees caused by Colony Collapse Disorder, or the possible extinction of a number of species of bats caused by White Nose Syndrome. But have you thought about the ramifications or kept up to date on the causes? Depending on the source, the cost to agribusiness resulting from continued bee die-offs ranges from $14 billion to $92 billion annually. And if the bats continued dying? Some species of bats can eat as many as 3,000 insects nightly, mosquitoes being common prey. To frame that more dramatically: the colony of approximately 20 million free-tailed bats at Bracken Cave, Texas, eats up to a quarter-million pounds of insects in a single night. Or put another way, the weight of 462,962 6oz cans of Deep Woods Off. So what’s causing these weird syndromes? In the case of the bats, they have no idea, and aren’t getting much funding to find out. And the bad news is that the fungus that seems to cause the syndrome has spread to Europe. If you want to help this massively underfunded research, consider supporting Bat Conservation International. Because if the fungus doesn’t get them, the wind turbines will. And in the case of the bees dying, there’s not much in the way of solid scientific answers yet, though insecticides and cell phones have both been proposed, and some are convinced the EPA is hiding information about recently approved pesticides.