The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday it will list the northern long-eared bat as threatened and install new protections for the mammal, a move that’s getting mixed reactions from the Pennsylvania timber industry.
The service said it’s trying to protect the bat, whose population has been decimated by the fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, while avoiding unnecessary regulations for landowners and others within the animal’s 37-state range.
That doesn’t mean change isn’t coming to the Keystone State once an interim rule that accompanies the listing goes into effect May 4. Pennsylvania sits within the white-nosed syndrome buffer zone, meaning the bat will have more protection here than in places yet to be affected by the disease.
Timber, oil, mining and other industry groups here have been on alert since the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013 proposed an endangered listing for the bat after severe population drops, but the executive director of the Pennsylvania Forest Products Association said the outcome is better than what has been on the table.
“The option we were facing, we weren’t going to be allowed to cut any trees from April until the first of December,” Paul Lyskava said, “and it’s pretty tough to run an industry on four months a year.”
From Watchdog.org: https://watchdog.org/209972/northern-long-eared-bat-pennsylvania/