White-nose syndrome has caused the most dramatic wildlife decline ever recorded in North America, killing over 6 million bats since 2006. Conservation responses include probiotic treatments, vaccines, and habitat management.
White-nose syndrome causes profound individual suffering before death. Infected bats arouse from torpor repeatedly during winter, burning through fat reserves they need to survive until spring. As energy reserves are depleted, bats may fly out of hibernacula on winter days, freezing or starving without insect prey. The dying process over a winter season involves increasing debilitation and ultimately death from starvation. The scale of mortality has ecosystem consequences as bats are primary controllers of night-flying insect populations. Conservation responses are genuinely promising - probiotic and vaccine approaches are moving from laboratory to field scale. The welfare and conservation urgency makes this one of the most active areas of wildlife disease research.