State wildlife biologists Trina Morris and Nikki Castleberry are a quarter-mile beneath tons of rock, smeared with mud and chilled to the bone from spending hours thigh-deep in a subterranean mountain stream. Welcome to Georgia's frontline against white-nose syndrome, where the work is sometimes miserable but ever vital.
The good news? "We haven't found bats in Georgia that look like they're impacted by white-nose," Morris says.
The bad: They won't be surprised if they do. The disease that has killed an estimated 5.7 million to 6.7 million cave-dwelling bats from New England to the Midwest and Canada, wiping out some hibernacula or overwintering sites of these airborne insect terminators, has been documented as close as Tennessee and North Carolina.
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