To the bat cave! US conservationists hope bunker can halt deadly fungus

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/14/bats-whitenose-tennessee-artificial-cave


Cory Holliday, cave expert for the Nature Conservancy in Tennessee, opens the entrance to the bat cave for humans (the animals enter through a shaft). Holliday hopes to attract 10,000 bats, though there is room for 200,000. Photograph: Ed Rode/Polaris

One October evening, as an autumn chill descends with the darkening sky, a great cloud of bats will rise out of the woods at a pre-arranged signal and dive with their thousands of beating wings down a concrete shaft and into a secure underground bunker, AKA the bat cave.

At least, that is what is called for in the script. The structure is an artificial bat cave, believed to be the first of its kind. Conservation groups are looking to the bunker to provide protection against an aggressive new disease that threatens to annihilate North America's bat population.

Work on the bat cave, built just over a metre below ground on a hill about 70 miles north-west of Nashville, began in late August, and should wind up this month. For those approaching the structure through the steel doors designated for humans, it feels a bit like entering a tomb. But for North American bats it could provide a shot at survival.