{"id":872079,"date":"2026-08-26T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/872079\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T12:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T12:00:12","slug":"n-b-s-devastated-bat-world-offers-cause-for-a-bit-of-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/872079\/","title":{"rendered":"N.B.’s devastated bat world offers cause for a bit of optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Karen Vanderwolf\u00a0has spent\u00a0her summer criss-crossing New Brunswick,\u00a0hunting for bat poop.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She’s been\u00a0looking in spaces no one has bothered to check\u00a0before: under\u00a0bridges.<\/p>\n

“I’ve put about\u00a05,000 miles\u00a0on my car,” said\u00a0the biologist, a post-doctoral\u00a0researcher at McMaster University and a research\u00a0associate\u00a0with the New Brunswick Museum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of early\u00a0August,\u00a0Vanderwolf had ventured under 311\u00a0New Brunswick bridges in the hunt for bat droppings, or guano.\u00a0<\/p>\n

WATCH | Bat poop under bridges and other good signs for the flying mammals :\"\"<\/p>\n

There’s cause for a little optimism when it comes to N.B. bats<\/p>\n

Some of the province\u2019s bat populations are starting to show signs of recovery after a decade of deadly white-nose syndrome.<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0a habitat many biologists\u00a0hadn’t\u00a0realized bats were using, she said.<\/p>\n

“There is some research from the U.S. that shows bat use of bridges, there’s not too much data for Canada,” Vanderwolf\u00a0said, referring\u00a0to an unpublished study done in the western United States.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They found about 50 per cent of bridges over water have bats.”<\/p>\n

In Canada so far,\u00a022 per cent of the bridges\u00a0Vanderwolf\u00a0has\u00a0checked have traces of\u00a0guano.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"AKaren Vanderwolf has spent much of her summer under New Brunswick bridges searching for bat guano. (Shane Fowler\/CBC News)<\/p>\n

“I wasn’t expecting that, because we’re in a very different situation here in the east, but I wasn’t expecting that\u00a0quite\u00a0that high,”\u00a0she said.<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0an especially high number when you consider that about 99 per cent of bats were wiped out over the last decade by\u00a0white-nose syndrome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0fungus\u00a0known as\u00a0pseudogymnoascus\u00a0destructans\u00a0was\u00a0responsible for\u00a0waking bats up while they hibernated in caves over winter.\u00a0Entire colonies woke up and died either by freezing or by starving to death.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Caves that once hosted thousands of bats now sit empty.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The imagery of those mass\u00a0die-offs still\u00a0haunts\u00a0Vanderwolf.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"SeveralBats with white-nose syndrome would wake up from hibernation in their caves and starve or freeze to death. (CBC News)<\/p>\n

“You go into a\u00a0cave,\u00a0you see all these thousands of dead bats,” Vanderwolf said. “That was very depressing.\u00a0Huge mortality in those\u00a0initial\u00a0years.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

While\u00a0she’s\u00a0been searching for signs of bats under bridges in the\u00a0summer, she has continued to survey hibernating colonies in the winter. <\/p>\n

And\u00a0that’s\u00a0where\u00a0she’s\u00a0finally\u00a0finding\u00a0good\u00a0news.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Our previous survey was in 2022,” she said. “We saw about 270 bats, where we used to see thousands.<\/p>\n

“But we repeated our surveys just this past April, and we found 470 bats.\u00a0So,\u00a0the population\u00a0has increased a little.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s\u00a0surprising\u00a0news,\u00a0according to\u00a0biologists, including Don McAlpine, the former curator of zoology at the New Brunswick\u00a0Museum.<\/p>\n

\"ADonald McAlpine, the former curator of zoology and head of the natural history department at the New Brunswick Museum, has spent years studying the province’s bat populations. (Brian Chisholm\/CBC)<\/p>\n

“I think actually the recovery is occurring a little more quickly than I might have expected,” said McAlpine, who\u00a0studied the decline and\u00a0witnessed\u00a0the\u00a0massive\u00a0bat die-off\u00a0first hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We have one site that we’re visiting where we’re seeing 250 to 300 bats during the winter months.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

He called the bump in numbers “pretty minor” and the recovery process\u00a0“early days” but still encouraging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The species\u00a0affected by white-nose syndrome\u00a0include\u00a0little\u00a0brown bats, tricolored\u00a0bats\u00a0and northern long-eared bats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

McAlpine said little brown bats are making the strongest comeback\u00a0of the three\u00a0so far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tricolored\u00a0bats\u00a0disappeared in\u00a02013, but a few were found again in 2024, he said. Northern long-eared bats\u00a0haven’t\u00a0been seen since white-nose syndrome\u00a0hit, and McAlpine said it could mean the species\u00a0didn’t\u00a0survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“That was one species hit particularly hard by white-nose,\u00a0and that modelling suggested actually could become extinct,” he said. \u00a0“We haven’t seen that one at all.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Genetic\u00a0resilience<\/p>\n

Every surviving member of those three species\u00a0has\u00a0been exposed to white-nose syndrome, according to McAlpine and\u00a0Vanderwolf. <\/p>\n

Both biologists\u00a0said\u00a0those individuals have\u00a0a\u00a0resistance\u00a0to\u00a0its\u00a0deadly effects. They expect that bats born in the aftermath will share that\u00a0resistance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We’re hoping\u00a0it’s\u00a0a genetic thing that they can pass on to their pups year after year,” Vanderwolf said. <\/p>\n

“In the initial days of white-nose syndrome here in the province, we would see many bats, pretty much all of them with the fungus very visible on their face.\u00a0As the name suggests, you see it right on their noses, their wings.\u00a0It’s\u00a0all on all the exposed skin.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

“These days\u00a0it’s\u00a0very rare\u00a0to see that and\u00a0it’s\u00a0nowhere near\u00a0the really luxuriant growth that we used to see. It’s\u00a0just a few spots or something like that.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Slow recovery\u00a0<\/p>\n

This is\u00a0why finding new bat habitats is so\u00a0important, according to\u00a0Vanderwolf. As the affected species start to see the smallest signs of\u00a0recovery,\u00a0she’s\u00a0encouraged by the finding of so much guano in those unexpected places under bridges.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While more research is\u00a0needed,\u00a0she\u00a0suspects bats are using the undersides of bridges as places to rest during their nighttime hunting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“They’re not feeding for the entire night, like eight hours straight or whatever the darkness lasts,” Vanderwolf said. “They will take sort of breaks, sort of have a little snooze, evacuate the bowels.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

She’s\u00a0working with the Department of\u00a0Transportation\u00a0to\u00a0identify\u00a0the best bridges to check\u00a0for\u00a0the endangered\u00a0species and speaks highly about how helpful\u00a0they’ve\u00a0been.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0expect\u00a0she’ll\u00a0be able to visit\u00a0the more\u00a0than 2,000 bridges in the province in a single summer. <\/p>\n

But\u00a0she’s\u00a0relaying which bridges\u00a0appear to be\u00a0most important for bats in the hope that someday New Brunswick’s\u00a0bat\u00a0population\u00a0will make a\u00a0complete\u00a0recovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I’m optimistic,” she said. “I think it will.\u00a0It might take hundreds of years, probably not in my lifetime, but I think it will come back eventually.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Karen Vanderwolf\u00a0has spent\u00a0her summer criss-crossing New Brunswick,\u00a0hunting for bat poop.\u00a0 She’s been\u00a0looking in spaces no one has bothered…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":872080,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-872079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=872079"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/872079\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=872079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=872079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=872079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}