Northern Hibernaculum
For years, biologist Susi von Oettingen at the US Fish and Wildlife Service tracked the devastation in New England wrought by White Nose Syndrome (WNS), a disease that infects hibernating bats. By some estimates, the disease has killed nearly seven million bats since it was first detected in a New York cave in 2006. Named for the revealing fungus that appears on an infected bat’s nose and wings, the disease has no cure.
In 2010, von Oettingen came up with an innovative idea. She knew that northern Maine’s Aroostock National Wildlife Refuge harbored 43 abandoned underground military bunkers on-site. However, where others saw bunkers, von Oettingen saw hibernacula. She enlisted help from Scott Darling and Alyssa Bennett at the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department, from Carl Herzog at the New York Department of Conservation, and from Steve Agius, Aroostock’s manager.
“I kind of threw out this idea, and my counterparts took it and ran with it,” von Oettingen says. They had no budget—everyone pitched in money here and there, she says—but they wanted to try.
Photo courtesy Steve Agius.