Aug 18, 2009 — State Conservation biologist Al Hicks says the
old Graphite Mine in the town of Hague near Lake George has seen
its population of Little Brown Bats nearly wiped out. Hicks
spoke over the weekend at a gathering of the Adirondack Nature
Conservancy in Newcomb. He said the hibernaculum, which sits in
a Nature Conservancy Preserve, has been infected by a deadly bat
disease called "white nose syndrome." "The Graphite Mine was the
largest Little Brown colony counted in the world, with about
200,000 animals," Hicks said. "Our guess walking through was
that there was about 3,000 animals left." Hicks first raised the
alarm about white nose syndrome in 2007. He said the latest
research indicates that the disease continues to spread in all
directions. "We have not seen any clear evidence yet of any kind
of resistance," he added. "The animals that are surviving from
one year to the next appear to be animals that simply got lucky
and didn't get infected." White nose is now killing bats in at
least nine stat