United States: New Yorkers discovered the bats in Howe Cave in 2006 had their snouts strangely coated with a peculiar, fuzzy, white substance.
This was the first time that white-nose syndrome, a disease caused by a fungus, was seen in bat species, which has been bringing great loss to bats in the US.
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Now, a new study from the United States showed over 1,000 human infants died because of the loss of bats in North America due to pesticides, a testimony to how necessary this much-loathed mammal is to our lives.
According to Eyal Frank, the study author and an ecological economist at the University of Chicago, “Bats have gained a bad reputation as being something to fear, especially after reports of a possible linkage with the origins [of] COVID-19,” sciencealert.com reported.
“But bats do add value to society in their role as natural pesticides, and this study shows that their decline can be harmful to humans,” Frank added.
More about White-nose syndrome (WNS)
WNS affects hibernating bats by growing a coral-like fungus called Pseudogymnoascus destructans around the bats’ mouth, nose, and ears.
Frank employed a quasi-experimental, observational method to analyze how pesticide use goes up when WNS kills hundreds of thousands of bats, and so does infant mortality.
Insectivorous bats naturally limit the crop pests; all the more with mortality rates of WNS provisionally standing at over seventy percent in the US since it was identified in 2006, the farmers found themselves overrun by pests that compelled them to resort to chemical control for their produce.
Frank also looked at the economic as well as the health repercussions of this transition in the counties with ample instances of bat deaths due to WNS and in the counties that appeared to be isolated from such deeds due to their reluctance to apply pesticides.
On the other hand, he ascertained that the number of deaths caused by bats relating to the use of pesticides increased in the afflicted counties by about 31 percent. At the same time, the sales revenue of crops declined by nearly 29 percent, sciencealert.com reported.
“This demonstrates the substitution between a declining natural input and a human-made input – providing the first empirical validation of a fundamental theoretical prediction in environmental economics,” said Frank.
What more have the experts stated?
He reckons the two have come to a total loss of USD 26.9 billion in GDP between 2006 and 2017.
Rates of infant mortality resulting from internal causes of death also increased in the same counties by 8 percent. It translates to roughly between 1,334 de minimis added deaths of infants, which Frank proved had probably resulted from the more frequent application of pesticides in WNS-affected counties.
He added, “Any additional alternative explanation would need to change along the expansion path of the wildlife disease around the same timing of its expansion.”
“More broadly, this study shows that wildlife adds value to society, and we need to better understand that value in order to inform policies to protect them,” he continued.