Wild Bat Welfare and White-Nose Syndrome

Bats provide critical ecosystem services and are declining globally. White-nose syndrome has devastated North American bat populations with severe welfare consequences.

Key Facts

There are over 1,400 bat species globally; bats represent approximately 20% of all mammal species.
White-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans, has killed an estimated 6.7 million bats in North America since 2006.
WNS disrupts hibernation, causing bats to rouse prematurely and deplete their fat reserves during winter, leading to starvation.
Some species including little brown bats have declined by over 90% in affected regions — one of the fastest wildlife declines ever recorded.
Bats consume billions of insects nightly, providing pest control services worth billions of dollars to agriculture.
WNS has spread from a single introduction in New York across most of North America and is progressing toward the Pacific Coast.
Biocontrol approaches using bacteria (Rhodococcus rhodochrous) that inhibit fungal growth are under trial.
European bat populations have some natural resistance to P. destructans suggesting potential for resistance development.

Welfare Considerations

White-nose syndrome causes prolonged suffering before death: affected bats rouse from hibernation during cold winter months when insects are unavailable, burn their fat reserves in futile flight attempts, and die from starvation and exposure. Individual bat suffering is compounded by the population-level devastation — species that took millennia to evolve their ecological niches are being eliminated within years. The welfare and conservation case for WNS research and intervention is compelling: developing treatments that allow bats to survive the fungal challenge would simultaneously prevent individual suffering and protect species from extinction. Public support for bat conservation through bat box installation, reduced pesticide use, and WNS research funding translates directly to welfare benefit.

What You Can Do

Install bat boxes in your garden or on buildings to provide roosting habitat.
Reduce garden pesticide use to support insect populations that bats depend on.
Support WNS research organisations working on biocontrol and treatment approaches.
Never disturb hibernating bats, which can cause the same premature arousal that WNS induces.
Follow bat monitoring organisations and support citizen science bat surveys.
Educate others about the ecological importance of bats and the WNS crisis.