The United States Fish & Wildlife Service will make a final decision by next April about whether the northern long-eared bat deserves to be listed as an endangered species – it has already said it believes it does – and some environmentalists appear ready to use the designation to shut down the Pennsylvania logging industry.
In at least one case, they haven’t even bothered to wait until the designation is official. In Pennsylvania, where two state agencies want an incidental taking permit to allow timber harvesting on 3.9 million acres, environmental groups have urged the USFWS to deny the application, saying the taking of any bats would violate the federal Endangered Species Act.
To be sure, the bat is in a precarious position. A disease known as white nose syndrome has wiped out at least 5.5 million cave-hibernating bats in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and Canada, according to the USFWS, and some groups say the number could total more than 7 million.
“Populations of the northern long-eared bat in some caves in the Northeast have declined by 99 percent since symptoms of white nose syndrome were first observed in 2006,” the agency stated this past June. The syndrome has now made its way toward the west, to Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin.
As a result, the agency proposed the endangered species designation, which would make even the incidental taking of bats illegal without special exceptions. Along with the proposal, the USFWS produced a guidance document for federal agencies describing favored conservation measures to put into place.
From The Lakeland Times: https://www.lakelandtimes.com/main.asp?SectionID=9&SubSectionID=9&ArticleID=21874