Consev* (for Conservancy, Conservation, etc.)

Good news for our furry bat friends!  Nearly five years ago, I blogged about White-Nose Syndrome, a little-understood disease that was destroying bat colonies in the United States and Canada.  But just last week, the Nature Conservancy reported that, for the first time, infected bats have been cured.  Thanks to the collaboration of individual researchers, agencies, and donors, 150 bats were treated and released back into the wild on May 20 at the Mark Twain Cave Complex in Hannibal, Missouri.  It turns out the fungus responsible for the disease, Pseudogymnoascus destructans, can be greatly inhibited by a common bacterium, and scientists are now hopeful for long-term success.

Congratulations to the bats and their helpers.  And you, dear reader, can do your part to Consev* the health of our catalogs by eliminating today’s typo.  OhioLINK is host to 25 instances, and 322 English-language entries can be found in WorldCat.

(MexicanFree-Tailed Bats or Tadarida brasiliensis at Carlsbad Caverns, from Wikimedia Commons)

Deb Kulczak