White-nose syndrome caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans has killed over 90% of affected bat species in North America, causing mass mortality events that represent one of the largest wildlife welfare crises in recorded history.
White-nose syndrome causes welfare harm at enormous scale — millions of individual bats dying through starvation and exhaustion over weeks of winter hibernation. The suffering of bats awakened inappropriately by the fungus, flying in the cold, unable to find food, and returning to roosts increasingly depleted represents one of the most significant wildlife welfare events of the modern era. The speed and scale of population collapse has been devastating, with species that had persisted for thousands of years declining by 90% within a decade. Probiotic treatment research offers genuine hope for welfare intervention at scale and represents exactly the kind of novel, science-based approach that wildlife welfare crises require.