A lethal disease that has decimated bat populations in other states has reached New Hampshire.
A team of biologists has found evidence of White Nose Syndrome on hibernating bats in Grafton County. A Franklin Pierce University biologist and a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official were in a cave in Lyman this month when they found two bats covered in the white fungus that characterizes the syndrome.
The syndrome first appeared in New York two winters ago, and has killed an estimated 400,000 bats – about 75 percent of the bat population in New York, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut. It showed up this winter in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
New Hampshire has about 4,500 bats from eight species hibernating in caves and mine shafts.