White Nose Syndrome

Although Indiana’s bat population has already been exposed to WNS and there the likelihood of cavers spreading the disease is extremely small we still request that the proper WNS procedures be followed. We will have an onsite decontamination station and we ask that all cavers to help self police these policies for all cavers in attendance. Some of the reasons this is important for us to all follow are:

• It is important that cavers show they can follow the procedures. This is key to convincing government agencies to reopen the caves managed by them. There are many cavers spending hours and hours of time and efforts in going through the proper DNR channels in Indiana in order to reopen caves on state land to cavers. Part of the argument is that we, as cavers, can implement and follow the proper procedures. There is even a chance that there may be a few caves reopened before Cave Capers which makes all of this even more critical that we comply with the proper procedures. 
• For anyone who caves in regions where WNS has not yet spread by natural means, it is strongly recommended that no clothing or gear that has been exposed to WNS be reused used regardless of the decon procedures used.  That is the responsible thing to do to prevent human transportation to uninfected bat caves.There have not been any unexplained jumps for the agencies to blame it on cavers, and we need to keep it this way.
• While it is likely that any cave in Indiana that has bats is already infected, there are still a significant number of caves without bats that are probably uninfected.  Since we don’t know the impact this fungus may have on other cave species, we should do what we can to not spread it where it hasn’t gotten there naturally.

Thank you for your cooperation!