Volume 34
Issue 4
White-nose Syndrome. Credit: National Parks Service
For the second year, BCI and the Tennessee Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) are pleased to award $100,000 in funding to support critical research in the fight against White-Nose Syndrome (WNS). WNS is a fungal disease that has killed millions of bats to date and is the primary threat to North Americas hibernating bats. Together,
BCI and TNC awarded three grants to solution-oriented projects that aim to identify and develop tools to control the fungus that causes WNS.
The three projects take complementary approaches to managing this fungus, Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd). The first project, proposed by Dr. Auston M. Kilpatrick of the University of California, Santa Cruz, seeks to optimize the treatment of infected bats using a bacteria as a biological control of the fungus. The second project, proposed by Dr. Joan Bennett of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, will test a fumigation compound as control for the fungal disease. The third project, proposed by Dr. Chris Cornelison of Georgia State University, builds on existing BCI/TNC-supported research. Cornelison seeks to optimize the production of another naturally occurring bacteria to enable its broad-scale use in treatments.