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[Audio] MSU Student Brings White Nose Syndrome to KY Capitol Attention

Matt Markgraf
/
WKMS

Since its discovery in a population of bats in a New York cave in 2007, white nose syndrome has become one of the gravest threats to American and Canadian bats.  White nose is a fungal infection that disrupts the bat’s hibernation cycle and has resulted in the death of approximately 6 million bats in North America.  Kentucky has not escaped the infection’s spread; it first appeared in the Commonwealth in 2011 and has been detected in bats in western Kentucky’s Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area.

These regional cases caught the attention of Murray State University student Jordan Robbins, and her research in this area was recently featured at Posters-at-the-Capitol in Frankfort.  Robbins and her faculty mentor, Dr. Terry Derting, spoke with Todd Hatton about the disease’s impact on our bats as well as the wider effect white nose could have in the Four Rivers region.

Todd Hatton hails from Paducah, Kentucky, where he got into radio under the auspices of the late, great John Stewart of WKYX while a student at Paducah Community College. He also worked at WKMS in the reel-to-reel tape days of the early 1990s before running off first to San Francisco, then Orlando in search of something to do when he grew up. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at Murray State University. He vigorously resists adulthood and watches his wife, Angela Hatton, save the world one plastic bottle at a time.
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