Sentinels Under Attack
The Los Angeles Times31 July 2006
Kenneth R. Weiss
Toxic algae that poison the brain have caused strandings and mass die-offs of marine mammals — barometers of the sea's health.
After the last patient of the day walked out the front of Raytel Medical Imaging clinic, veterinarian Frances Gulland slipped an oversized animal crate through the back door. Inside was a California sea lion. The animal was emaciated, disoriented and suffering from seizures.
A female with silky, caramel-colored fur, wide-set eyes and long whiskers, she was named Neuschwander, after the lifeguard who had found her six weeks earlier, comatose and trembling under a pier at Avila Beach near San Luis Obispo.
Taken to the Marine Mammal Center near Sausalito, Neuschwander showed signs of recovery at first. Her eyes began to clear and focus. She frolicked in the small pool in her chain-link enclosure and wolfed down mackerel at feedings. Then she relapsed.
She quit eating and lost 40 pounds. Her sunken eyes darted around, as if tracking a phantom just outside the cage. Her head bobbed and weaved in erratic figure eights.
Neuschwander was loaded into a crate at the nonprofit center, the world's busiest hospital dedicated to the care of wild marine mammals, and trucked across the Golden Gate Bridge. Gulland, the center's director of veterinary science, wanted to scan Neuschwander's brain at the imaging clinic.
Bird Flu Detected in Three People in Iowa, Study FindsNational Geographic News
31 July 2006
Amitabh Avasthi
A duck hunter and two wildlife workers in Iowa have tested positive for a nonlethal form of avian flu, according to a team of U.S scientists. Their study is the first to suggest that bird flu can be transmitted to humans from wild birds.
"We did not detect H5N1, the virus that has caused such a high death rate in the humans it has infected," said the study's lead author, James Gill, who is a disease specialist at the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory in Iowa City.
Instead the researchers found that the infection was caused by the H11 virus, a strain commonly found in ducks, geese, and shorebirds but not previously associated with human illness.
The study was conducted as part of ongoing surveillance efforts to track diseases that could be transmitted from animals to humans.
(See National Geographic magazine's "Tracking the Next Killer Flu.")
The research involved 39 duck hunters and 68 wildlife experts from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources. Their blood serum was tested for traces of antibodies against the influenza virus. Antibodies are signs of infection.
The findings appear in August issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.
West Nile Creates Problems for Endangered Birds
Radio Iowa
31 July 2006
Stella Shaffer
West Nile has been identified in 20 Iowa counties so far this summer according to the state public-health department, which has confirmed just two human cases. Stephen Dinsmore, an avian ecologist at Iowa State University, says since the virus is linked to the death of crows and bluejays, it's safe to say it also affects a lot of other wild birds in Iowa.
Dinsmore says it's more widespread than just a few, and while he doesn't know how susceptible various species of birds may be, "every indication is that it varies." This month at a wildlife center in Idaho, West Nile Virus was blamed for the deaths of four condor chicks, a species still considered rare and endangered.
Dinsmore says Iowa's got its own list of wild birds considered at risk or endangered. Around 410 species of birds have been identified in Iowa, and he says perhaps 20 species are considered, between federal and state lists.
In Iowa, endangered birds include the piping plover, least tern and trumpeter swan. Dinsmore says the mosquito-borne virus could also add to the burden of survival for species that are already very low in numbers.
Biologists Checking for Bird Flu, Gather Data to Track the Virus
The Assoicated Press (Posted by Albany Democrat-Herald)
28 July 2006
PORTLAND (AP) — As part of a national effort to track avian influenza, state and federal biologists have begun monitoring wild birds around Oregon.
Scientists began work earlier this month and will continue the early detection effort into next year, swabbing live birds for samples, testing dead birds captured by hunters and even testing bird droppings. States across the nation are making similar efforts to collect data for tracking.
But monitoring in Oregon and along the West Coast is key, said Brad Bales, migratory bird coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. He said the region has larger concentrations of birds that could interact with birds from areas hit with deadly strains of the virus.
Bird flu has existed for about a decade but has caused more concern recently as a threat to poultry, livestock and humans. It has affected humans in 10 countries and forced the slaughter of some 200 million chickens worldwide.
“The biggest thing that people need to understand is that this is a wildlife disease,” Bales said.
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