Rare bats may find sanctuary from a near extinction event in Southwestern Saskatchewan, says one Saskatchewan bat expert.

The discovery of a rare bat in the Old Man on His Back Conservation Area last summer may play a key role in conserving the already-endangered species from further harm.

The Little Brown Bat, an endangered species which was a surprise to discover in the grasslands, is one of many bats affected by White Nose Syndrome, a deadly fungal pathogen sweeping the bat population.

The pathogen affects the bats mostly during hibernation according to the man who discovered the bats in the prairies, Joseph Poissant, a bat expert with the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

"It's a fungal pathogen that basically wakes them up when their hibernating. You can think of a bat as basically a battery in the winter, so when they hibernate they've built up enough fat to make it through the whole winter but what White Nose does is it makes them wake up more often then they would normally, so usually they wake up every couple of weeks and use the bathroom and then they go back to sleep, but White Nose irritates their skin and causes them to wake up once a week or more so what happens by about January or February they basically starve to death because of White Nose."

Poissant said that in eastern North America areas affected by White Nose see catastrophic damage to bat populations.

"I know in New York State the first case where they found White Nose they had a 95 to 99 per cent loss of population, and I know where I did an honours in Nova Scotia, like a honours biology degree, and the cave where I did my honours work, all of those bats are gone. They were Little Browns and Northern Long Ear bats, and when I was doing work there were 12,000 bats there hibernating in the winter, and it's completely empty now."

The disease is spreading from the east coast of North America, its first appearance in the continent being in New York State in 2007, and the furthest that it has reached in Canada is Manitoba.

Offering a hopeful look at things, Poissant said that the disease might not reach southwest Saskatchewan, and instead might be travelling through the northern part of the province due to moisture levels.

"I'm hoping that it doesn't actually come into the prairies like into the grasslands, I'm expecting it will probably come through the northern part of the province through the Boreal Forest, and maybe through the Boreal Transition, but a lot of parasites that exist out outside of the grasslands, its too dry for them to survive within the prairie, so there is a good chance that White Nose might not actually - I'm just hypothesizing - might not actually survive within the grasslands because it's so dry."

Poissant said that even though the devastation to the bat population is substantial, bat numbers will eventually recover.

"I mean these things move through populations," he said with grim optimism. "You know we're existing on such a small time scale that we don't appreciate how these things happen but these things happen all the time in populations, so there will be bats again, just not in our lifetime."

Further evidence to support the theory that bats will overcome the syndrome is that bats from Europe are immune to the White Nose, hinting that at some point other bats were affected by it and evolved to be immune to it, as outlined by Poissant.

"There is actually evidence that this same fungus is found in Europe, but it came through bat populations there like 10,000 years ago. I don't actually have the exact amount of years ago, but bats there are immune to it, it doesn't affect them at all."

There is no cure for White Nose, and Poissant said that those who study bats like himself are starting to give up hope one being found.

"It's run its course for 11 years now so it makes more sense to keep doing research, see if we can see the spread of it. I mean it's interesting from a pandemic point of view because your seeing something slowly spread through a population on a continental scale which is really important from a biological point of view, but as far as preventing White Nose, I think it's kind of a lost cause at this point, and it's halfway across the continent, and we haven't done anything to slow it down."