Wildlife Surveillance [News]

Center hopes to be part of the first defense against bio-terrorism

Daily Press
26 February 2006

Wildlife Center of Virginia has applied for grant to implement surveillance network.

Canada and the United States are keeping a close eye on migratory birds that spend summers in Alaska. Not for pleasurable bird-watching reasons, but for public safety.

Hundreds of thousands of birds annually fly south for winter homes as far away as South America, crossing and settling into many North American areas as they travel.

It wouldn't take much - maybe something the size of a can of hairspray - to inoculate migrating ducks, swans and geese with a toxin that could threaten humans or endanger the agriculture industry.

Ed Clark, director of the non-profit Wildlife Center of Virginia, believes the nation should prepare for and be vigilant about the possibility of environmental bio-terrorism.

He also thinks wildlife can be our earliest warning signal of a threat. For example, the possibility of waterfowl landing on and then dying from a poisoned public water supply is why Clark and the wildlife center have applied for and hope to hear soon about a $175,000 grant from the Institute for Defense and Homeland Security to plan and implement the North American Wildlife Disease Surveillance Network.

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Bird flu watchers keep eye on Alaska
Saint Petersburg Times
26 February 2006
Lisa Greene

The migratory patterns of wild birds intersect there. When the birds leave, will they bring H5N1 to North America?

In a few weeks, as the sun begins to warm and the days lengthen, the birds will start taking flight.

By the end of March, thousands upon thousands - ducks, geese, sandpipers - will begin their annual trek north, toward Alaska. Scientists hope they won't be carrying the notorious bird flu virus with them.

But as world health officials look toward Europe in alarm, where bird flu is spreading among wild birds faster than anyone expected, some U.S. scientists are looking half the world away, to Alaska.

Alaska is the crossroads of three of the world's great migratory flyways. Birds from Asia and North America mingle here, winging across continents to find the perfect bird nursery. Predators are few, tasty insects plentiful and sunlit hours long enough for plenty of baby feeding time.

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Transporation of Infected Animal Hides and Avian Influenza [News]

Officials Try to Trace the Journey of a Disease
The New York Times
23 February 2006
Marc Santora

In the small, impoverished West African nation of Ivory Coast, the ancient plague of anthrax still thrives, infecting and killing animals at one of the highest rates in all of Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

Among the animals plagued by anthrax are goats, which are prized for their skins. When stretched tight, those skins provide the perfect acoustical top for a drum. And that most pre-modern of instruments is wildly popular in the most modern of cities, sold on street corners from London to New York.

It is through this bit of commerce, the authorities now suspect, that the germ was brought to New York in December, lurking in the hairs of a hide that was carried in a suitcase through Kennedy International Airport by an unsuspecting African musician. Now, officials are investigating how that musician, Vado Diomande, was able to transport infected animal carcasses thousands of miles without being detected.

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Avian influenza: significance of mutations in the H5N1
World Health Organization
20 February 2006

Several recent media reports have included speculations about the significance of mutations in H5N1 avian influenza viruses. Some reports have suggested that the likelihood of another pandemic may have increased as a result of changes in the virus.

Since 1997, when the first human infections with the H5N1 avian influenza virus were documented, the virus has undergone a number of changes.

These changes have affected patterns of virus transmission and spread among domestic and wild birds. They have not, however, had any discernible impact on the disease in humans, including its modes of transmission. Human infections remain a rare event. The virus does not spread easily from birds to humans or readily from person to person.

Influenza viruses are inherently unstable. As these viruses lack a genetic proof-reading mechanism, small errors that occur when the virus copies itself go undetected and uncorrected. Specific mutations and evolution in influenza viruses cannot be predicted, making it difficult if not impossible to know if or when a virus such as H5N1 might acquire the properties needed to spread easily and sustainably among humans. This difficulty is increased by the present lack of understanding concerning which specific mutations would lead to increased transmissibility of the virus among humans.

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Bird Markets Pose Possible Risk for Avian Flu
Living on Earth
17 February 2006

Government officials and the poultry industry are stepping up efforts to stop bird flu. Critics say there are some weak links in that defense. Living on Earth's Jeff Young reports. Wild birds are transmitters of the H5N1 virus. The federal government has recently launched a program to monitor migratory birds coming into the US and detect whether they are bringing bird flu with them. Host Jeff Young speaks with Hon Ip of the US Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center.

>>> Links to Transcript and Audio Recording

Cat Parasite 'Is Killing Otters' [News]

BBC News
19 February 2006
Paul Rincon
Photos: BBC News

A parasite carried by cats is killing off sea otters, a veterinary specialist has told a major US science conference. The Californian researcher has called for owners to keep their cats indoors. Cat faeces carrying Toxoplasma parasites wash into US waterways and then into the sea where they can infect otters, causing brain disease.


The parasite is familiar to medical researchers, as it can damage human foetuses when expectant mothers become infected while changing cat litter.

The most likely source of infection for sea otters is the parasite's tough egg-like stage, known as the oocyst, which is passed in the faeces of cats.

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Chronic Wasting Disease [News]

Wasting disease found in more Alberta deer
Edmonton Journal
17 February 2006

Alberta has documented another four cases of chronic wasting disease in wild deer near the Alberta-Saskatchwan boundary.

This brings the total of the number of deer with confirmed cases of the disease in the province to eight since the first case was discovered last September.

The federal Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed the province’s latest findings this week.

The latest cases were discovered near Acadia Valley and Empress, near the Saskatchewan boundary just northeast of Medicine Hat.

They were in the same area as the other four cases. Alberta’s first case of the disease in wild deer was discovered last September about 30 kilometres southeast of Oyen.

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State Finds No Disease in 51 Deer
The Wichita Eagle
21 February 2006
Michael Pearce
Photo: hikingthecarolinas.com/deer!.php

No new cases of chronic wasting disease were found in a recent test done on 51 northwest Kansas deer.

The deer were shot by Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks biologists Feb. 13-14, within a 15-mile radius of where a Cheyenne County whitetail doe -- which tested positive for the disease -- was killed by a hunter late last year.

"That's very good news," said Bob Mathews, Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks information and education chief.

If widespread in Kansas, some fear chronic wasting disease could deplete localized deer populations, cripple Kansas' deer hunting industry or spread to commercial deer and elk operations.

Last year's infected doe was the first case of the disease detected in a wild Kansas animal. A farm-raised elk imported from Colorado to Kansas tested positive in 2001.

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Zoonosis [News]

Humans Making Wildlife Sick
Eurek Alert
17 February 2006
Mark Lewis

Whether it's monkeys and AIDS or mosquitoes and the West Nile Virus, we're used to thinking of wildlife as reservoirs for emerging infectious human diseases. But a Canadian mathematical biologist says that it's time that we turned the tables – as often as not, it's humans that are making the wildlife sick, often to our own detriment.

It's a 180-degree turn in perspective that Dr. Mark Lewis says is critical to our understanding of emerging infectious diseases of both wildlife and humans. And, he says, in the case of at least one ocean-based disease outbreak, biology and math are proving to be powerful allies in helping stem the growing tide of an ocean plague.

"With emerging infectious diseases of wildlife today there's almost always some human component," say Dr. Lewis, an NSERC-funded mathematical ecologist in the mathematics and statistics department at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.

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Diseases from Animals to Humans
Thirty-eight pathogens have emerged in the past 25 years; experts say more will make leap

Times-Dispatch
20 February 2006
A.J. Hostetler

ST. LOUIS -- Diseases that originate in animals increasingly threaten human health and lives. In the past quarter-century, 38 infectious pathogens have emerged, most from animals and capable of easily and quickly adapting. And scientists expect more to arrive at a rate of one or two per year.

The 38 pathogens, which include HIV, SARS, Ebola, mad-cow disease and now the notorious avian flu, are among the more than 1,400 that can infect and sicken humans. As recently catalogued by epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, they range from viruses, bacteria, parasites and protozoa to fungi.

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Mysterious Disease Killing Seabirds and Poultry not Wild Birds More Likely Carries of Influenza [News]

Disappearing Seabirds in Puget Sound
UC Davis News and Information
15 February 2006
Photo courtesy of UC Davis News and Information

Something is killing the seabirds and sea ducks of Puget Sound, and UC Davis experts are working to uncover the causes of the problem. They estimate that today's population of birds in 30 species is only about half what it was in the 1970s.

"Thirty percent -- nearly one-third -- of these bird species are already listed as threatened or endangered in our region, or are candidates for listing," said UC Davis wildlife veterinarian Joe Gaydos, who works on Puget Sound ecosystem issues at his office on Orcas Island, north of Seattle. "The birds are sentinels for the health of our regional ecosystem and they are telling us that something is seriously wrong."

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Poultry, Not Wild Birds, Most Often Carries Deadly Avian Flu to Africa
The Washington Post
16 Februray 2006
David Brown
Photo courtesy of The Washington Post

The lethal strain of H5N1 bird flu found in Nigeria this month probably got there in poultry and not through the movement of wild birds, according to migratory-bird experts and several lines of circumstantial evidence.

The first Nigerian cases were found at a commercial farm with 46,000 chickens, not among backyard flocks that would have greater contact with wild birds. Nigeria imports more than a million chicks a year from countries that include Turkey, where H5N1 appeared last fall, and China, where it has circulated for a decade.

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Avian Influenza [News and Resource]

Little Risk of Bird Flu Landing [News]
Eastern Daily Press
16 February 2006
Paul Hill

Wildlife experts last night moved to reassure people about the "small" threat of avian flu reaching East Anglia, after the discovery of dead swans in Western Europe.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) said people should continue to enjoy their gardens and the countryside and stressed there was only a "theoretical risk" of migrating birds spreading the disease to Britain.

Yesterday, the European Commission announced it was to spend £1.3m on improving "national surveillance programmes" after German authorities confirmed that two swans found dead on the Baltic island of Ruegen had the killer H5N1 strain of the virus.

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Wikipedia - Influenzavirus A [Resource]

A community site that anyone can edit. Provides diverse information. Many of the references are from authoritative sources, while others are not, all contributing to making an interesting site.

>>> WEB SITE

Avian Influenza [News]

Avian Influenza Reported in 3 More Countries [News]
Washington Post
15 February 2006
Associated Press

TEHRAN, Feb. 14 -- Iran on Tuesday said 135 wild swans died of bird flu in marshlands near the Caspian Sea in the country's first case of the spreading virus, and officials in Germany and Austria said the virus had apparently come across their borders as well.

The disease's likely spread to three new countries follows the recent deaths of humans from the H5N1 strain of bird flu in Turkey and Iraq, Iran's neighbors, and the march of the disease into the European countries of Greece and Italy.

Olympic officials in Italy said bird flu posed no threat to the Turin Olympics. But an official in Nigeria warned that bird flu was fast spreading in that country, and a U.N. expert said the strain may have surfaced in neighboring Niger.

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West Africa wild birds under scrutiny in flu checks [News-Interview]
Reuters

14 Feb 2006
Nick Tattersall

DJOUDJ, Senegal, Feb 14 (Reuters) - One of West Africa's biggest bird sanctuaries on a main migration route to Europe is stepping up checks for bird flu as U.N. officials warn wildfowl returning from the region could spread the virus even wider.

Hundreds of thousands of wild birds from Europe spend winter on the Djoudj wetlands, which run along Senegal's northern border with Mauritania, and will start their return journey over the next few months.

Deadly H5N1 bird flu, which has killed at least 91 people in Asia and the Middle East, was detected in poultry in Nigeria last week, the first cases in Africa. The strain was also confirmed in wild birds in the European Union for the first time at the weekend.

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Zn, Cu, Cd and Hg binding to metallothioneins in harbour porpoises Phocoena [Journal Article]

BMC Ecology
7 February 2006
K Das, A De Groof, T Jauniaux, JM Bouquegneau
Photo courtesy of BBC News


Harbour porpoises Phocoena phocoena from the southern North Sea are known to display high levels of Zn and Hg in their tissues linked to their nutritional status (emaciation). The question arises regarding a potential role of metallothioneins (MTs) with regard to these high metal levels. In the present study, metallothionein detection and associated Zn, Cd, Cu and Hg concentrations were investigated in the liver and kidney of 14 harbour porpoises collected along the Belgian coast.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Is it Baiting that Spreads CWD? [News]

Nipawin Journal
February 08, 2006
By Robert Arnason
Photo: Nipawin Journal

It's a question that has provoked many kitchen table arguments in Saskatchewan - is hunting deer with bait, right or wrong? For Ken McDaid the answer is clear. Crystal clear. "Shooting a bear with its head in a barrel or a deer with its head in a pile of grain, that's wrong," said McDaid, who farms south of Chitek Lake. "To me, that's not hunting."

McDaid is president of the Fair Chase League of Saskatchewan, an organization with a mission of fairer hunting and a ban on baiting in our province. Since their inception in 1994, most of their letters and phone calls centred on a single point - baiting is unethical.

But recently their argument has changed. "We started out on ethics and then got into this disease thing," said McDaid, who is a hunter but prefers to walk the forest while searching for game. "When you start artificial feeding and bunching them up, that's when disease becomes a problem." The Fair Chase League and McDaid are convinced baiting of deer is connected to the rise of Chronic Wasting Disease in Saskatchewan.

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Investigations into Cases of Swan Mortality in Iran

OIE Alerts Message
Edited by ProMed
7 Feb 2006
Dr Hossein Hassani, Head of Iran Veterinary Organization (IVO), Ministry of Jihad-e-Agriculture
Photo: TrekNature


On 2 Feb 2006, within the framework of the Avian Influenza Passive Surveillance Plan in place for wild birds in Gilan province, there was a report describing a few mortalities among swans in 2 wetlands (Selkeh and Espand). Immediately, all specific activities were implemented according to OIE guidelines and recommendations, all of the native birds in 6 villages considered as epidemiological units at risk (within a 2-km radius) were destroyed and sampled and their
owners were compensated by IVO.

Sera were tested using haemagglutination inhibition (H5, H9 and Newcastle disease) and tissue samples were tested by RT-PCR. All results were negative.

Tissue samples taken from swans will be sent tomorrow morning to the OIE Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza and Newcastle disease in Padua, Italy, in order to perform some virological tests.

- --
OIE Animal Health Information Department


[Swan mortality due to H5N1 has been observed in Mongolia, Romania, Croatia and Russia
(Astrakhan region). Results of the laboratory investigations at Weybridge and Padua are anticipated with concern. - Mod.AS]

>>> Report

Toxin Levels in Livers of Bald Eagles Analyzed to Gauge Species' Health [News]

Bangor Daily News
February 6, 2006

OLD TOWN - Four bald eagles lay on a conference room table, eyes closed, their talons stuck in a lifeless grip. Plastic bags wrapped like a blanket around the sides of the enormous birds.

Yet even in death, the eagles remain majestic and imposing creatures.

"With all the wildlife out there, there are some species that just grab you," said wildlife biologist Steve Mierzykowski, looking down at the birds. For him, eagles are at the top of that list.

That said, the biologist had a job to do this Sunday morning, and not exactly a pretty one. But it is one that should provide valuable clues to the health of Maine's eagles.

Using a scalpel and medical scissors, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist carefully parted a bird's feathers and sliced through its skin and flesh as he slowly made his way toward the liver. A few well-placed snips and Mierzykowski removed the liver, placing it in a specimen jar. (Photo courtesy of John Clarke Russ)

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AVM and Chytrid fungus [News]

Undiagnosed Die-off, Avian - Argentina

ProMed-mail Posting
Archive Number: 20060202.0335
02-FEB-2006
Jack Woodall, Associate Editor ProMED-mail, woodall@promedmail.org

The original report of this outbreak, in our translation from the Spanish, reads:

"Technical personnel took soil and water samples, and they also collected dozens of dead birds, mainly ducks and eaglets, so that necropsies will be performed."

It is true that the dictionary translation of the Spanish word "aguiluchos" is "eaglets," but the list of birds of Argentina online in Spanish and English shows that the various birds called
"aguiluchos" are actually hawks, mostly of the genus _Buteo_, that feed on birds and small mammals; see: http://www.geocities.com/avesdeargentina/Listadeaves.html

Although botulism is certainly a possibility, this outbreak strikingly resembles those posted on ProMED from 1995 onwards of avian vacuolar myelinopathy (AVM), which also affects waterbirds and raptors in certain lakes in the USA (see refs. below). Those waterbirds had fed on a plant, hydrilla, introduced by the aquarium industry, which has escaped and now covers huge areas of many lakes in the USA. In some of those lakes, the hydrilla is covered with a
species of cyanobacterium that produces a neurotoxin. Plant-eating American coots and ducks die from the toxin and are scavenged by bald eagles, which die in their turn. Red-tailed hawks have been experimentally fed with affected coots, and have died with typical lesions, so a cyanobacterium/hydrilla/ duck/hawk food chain is possible.

If necropsies show the characteristic lesions of AVM in the brains of the birds in Argentina, investigators should look at the vegetation in the lake and see if any of the duck food-plants are infested with cyanobacteria.

Reference:
Wilde SB, Murphy TM, Hope CP, Habrun SK, Kempton J, Birrenkott A, Wiley F, Bowerman WW, Lewitus AJ. 2005. Avian vacuolar myelinopathy linked to exotic aquatic plants and a novel cyanobacterial species. Environ Toxicol. 2005 Jun; 20(3):348-53.


Pregnancy Test May Lie Behind Deadly Frog Fungus


Reuters
3 Feb 2006
Mary Marshall - tropical.forestry@btinternet.com

What do an old pregnancy test for women and a mysterious fungus that is killing frogs have in common?

Plenty, according to researchers at North-West University in South Africa, who believe they have traced the spread of the killer fungus to trade in the African clawed frog, used for decades in a bizarre but effective way of determining pregnancy.

"We think we have traced the origin of the spread of the amphibian chytrid fungus to the 'frog' pregnancy test for women, which was widely used from the 1930s to the 1960s," said Che Weldon, a zoologist at North-West University who has been researching the phenomenon.

That test involved taking the urine of a woman and injecting it into an African clawed frog. If the woman was pregnant the hormones in her urine would stimulate ovulation in the frog and it would spawn within a matter of hours.

The species was exported to labs around the world in huge quantities from South Africa from the 1930s -- the decade in which Weldon has traced the first recorded case of the fungus by examining preserved frogs in museum collections.

Some of the exported frogs were released or escaped into the wild where it is believed they spread the fungus, which can move quicklythr ough a water system and can jump from one frog species to another. (

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Endangered species: Time to raise the devil [News]

Nature
1 February 2006 [published online]
Carina Dennis

A horrible facial cancer is decimating the Tasmanian devil population. But researchers in Australia think they have found a way to save the species. facial-tumour disease, a deadly transmissible cancer that is threatening the survival of this feisty marsupial. When reviewing her records later that night, Lazenby, who is part of a scientific team monitoring the devils, was astonished to find that the animal, nicknamed Half pea, had been recorded nearly a year previously as having the disease. This made her one of the longest survivors the team had ever encountered. The fact that Half pea had resisted the tumour for at least twice as long as most other devils meant she might hold a clue for scientists trying to help the species. "Amid this heartbreaking background of losing so many devils, suddenly this animal pops up and it's like, 'wow, maybe
there is hope'," says Lazenby.

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Switching Drugs for Livestock May Help Save Critically Endangered Asian Vultures [Journal Article]

Public Library of Science Biology. 2006 Mar; 4(3):e66. Epub 2006 Jan
G Swan, V Naidoo, R Cuthbert, et al.


Abstract excerpt: Veterinary use of the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drug diclofenac in South Asia has resulted in the collapse of populations of three vulture species of the genus Gyps to the most severe category of global extinction risk. Vultures are exposed to diclofenac when scavenging on livestock treated with the drug shortly before death. Diclofenac causes kidney damage, increased serum uric acid concentrations, visceral gout, and death. Concern about this issue led the Indian Government to announce its intention to ban the veterinary use of diclofenac by September 2005. Implementation of a ban is still in progress late in 2005, and to facilitate this we sought potential alternative NSAIDs by obtaining information from captive bird collections worldwide. We found that the NSAID meloxicam had been administered to 35 captive Gyps vultures with no apparent ill effects. (photo courtesy of PLoS)

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