How disinfecting an old mineshaft saved a colony of little brown bats

Using chemicals in the environment can save wildlife from deadly pathogens, but process is not without risks, say experts

Joseph Hoyt and his team first showed up to the abandoned mineshaft in Wisconsin during the late summer of 2017, personal protective equipment in hand. Long before Covid-19, the supplies were to protect them from the chlorine dioxide gas they had brought along. Their aim was to use the disinfectant gas to kill the Pseudogymnoascus destructans fungus lining the walls of the mineshaft, which had already killed millions of bats across North America.

You're talking about essentially an entire taxonomic group that has been reduced by over 90% - it's like the equivalent of losing all birds or something like that," says Hoyt, an assistant professor in disease ecology at Virginia Tech University. This isn't just bad for the victims - bats play an essential role in ecosystems by consuming large numbers of insects, dispersing seeds and pollinating.