Green Options

Feds suggest a delay in 3 projects so they can study dying bats

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife service has sent a letter to to the developers of three wind farms in upstate New York strongly urging they consider other locations for their proposed projects. Biologists for the agency are concerned that the wind farms will further threaten imperiled bat populations suffering from an unprecedented die-off.

One of the wind energy developers, Iberdrola Renewables has decided to hold off on moving forward with the Horse Creek project until the impacts of white nose syndrome on bat populations are better understood. But developers of the other two projects have yet to make similar moves.

There is little known about the so-called “white nose syndrome,” so-named because of the white substance found on the face of the sick bats. The unexplained illness has killed of tens of thousands of small brown bats throughout the northeast over the past two winters. As temperatures warm and bats emerge from a winter of hibernation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has sent letters to three Jefferson County (NY) wind developers “strongly urging them to look at other places” for their proposed wind energy projects.

Bats across New York state are dying from a mysterious malady known as “white-nose syndrome.”

Named for the white fungal growth that appears around the noses of infected bats, the condition has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of bats in the Northeastern U.S., mostly in New York but now spreading to other states as well.

The syndrome was first discovered last year in four bat hibernating caves near Albany. It’s now been observed at “virtually every significant bat hibernation site in New York,” according to the Center for Biological Diversity.