DRU HUNTER

Today is Valentine's Day and I got up this morning and went through some bat footage that the MARY'S WOODS film editor is going to edit. I love bats. On Friday, filmed at a cave with a bat biologist where the endangered Indiana bat hibernates. There are only about 1,000 of the endangered Indiana bats in Pennsylvania and only about two dozen of them in Maryland. At the time of Captain John Smith and Queen Mary in the early 1600's there were millions of Indiana bats. Their numbers have declined because Indiana bat maternal colonies need trees that have cavities in them to raise their young. These kinds of trees with holes are usually found in old growth forests and because of deforestation these bats do not have the habitat they require. The cave I filmed at was infected with white nose syndrome so the Indiana bats and other species of cave bats inside it are not expected to make it past the winter. White nose is a new bat disease in the U. S. but found in Europe. It wipes out 96% of the bats it infects so it is a race with science to try and find a cure before the U. S. cave bats, including the endangered Indiana bat, are wiped out.