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August 20, 2008

Bats will have free rein of cave with no human presence

By JOHN FLAVELL The Daily Independent Wed Aug 20, 2008, 11:46 PM EDT

OLIVE HILL — The federally endangered Indiana Bat colonies of Carter County will be living in yet another gated community.

Work started this week to construct a large bat gate across the entrance to Big Bone Cave, which is in a 181-acre addition to the Tygart State Forest known as the Adkins Tract. The $14,000 project will allow the bats free access to the cave, but will keep humans out.

The pace to close off area caves to humans picked up this year when more than 100 of the protected bats were killed in October in nearby Laurel Cave, on Carter Caves State Resort Park property. Those deaths were an act of vandalism and a $5,000 reward is pending for information leading to arrests.

Brent Harrel of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said another life-threatening danger to the bats is gaining attention. Last winter, tens of thousands of bats in the northeast United States died from what is being called “white-nose syndrome.” The syndrome is thought to be caused by a white fungus that forms on the bats’ muzzles.

When the bats awaken from hibernation in mid-winter to clean off the fungus, they burn stored body fat and starve to death.

“We have to get these bats here safe so we can observe behavior and migration patterns,” Harrel said, watching steel being hand-carried to the mouth of Big Bone Cave. “We know they can migrate as far as Michigan; and we have to keep them safe so we can better understand them.”

Chuck Wilburn, district forester with the Kentucky Division of Forestry, said the pristine condition of the cave was just one reason the location of the cave has been kept low-key since the tract was added to the state forest in November 2006.

“We didn’t want many people knowing exactly the location, the place is just so clean,” he said. “With the gate up, we can keep people from going in there and disturbing the place.”

Human access to the Adkins Tract is limited to foot traffic because of the cave and an earlier project started in April. For that project, nearly all of the former farm land has been planted with 28,000 trees, which won’t be available for harvesting for at least 80 years.

JOHN FLAVELL can be reached at jflavell@adelphia.net or (606) 326-2659.

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