UC Davis Targets Crows in West Nile Battle
The Daily Democrat
05 Sep 2006
Photo courtesy: The Daily Democrat
Where there are communal crow roosts, look for the West Nile virus. Corvids, including American crows, Yellow-billed Magpies, Western scrub-jays and other members of the Corvidae family, serve as the primary reservoirs or incubators for the mosquito-borne virus, according to research entomologist William Reisen of the Center for Vectorborne Diseases at UC Davis. "Corvid surveillance is crucial to stopping the transmission of the virus," he said this week.
"Communal crow roosts help drive the West Nile virus into the Culex (mosquito) populations - that's why it's so important for people to find and report dead birds," said Reisen, a professor with the Department"Crows are good hosts for mosquitoes. There's an amazing amount of virus in the bloodstream of infected crows, sometimes as much as 10 billion virus particles in one millimeter of blood. They're like a big sack of virus."
Reisen and his research team are targeting crows in work funded by the UC Mosquito Research Program, Sacramento-Yolo Mosquito and Vector Control District, and the National Institutes of Health. CVEC, a unit of the UCD School of Veterinary Medicine, works closely with UCMRP, the UCD School of Medicine and the UCD College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.
Study a Blow to Elk Feeding
Jackson Hole News and Guide
06 Sep 2006
Cory Hatch
Authors say practice of test-and-slaughter may lead to more, not less, brucellosis in elk.
Brucellosis management in Wyoming, especially congregating elk on feed grounds, only exacerbates the disease and flies in the face of current disease-prevention research, according to a recent review. The study, printed in the journal Frontiers in Ecology, also takes issue with current test-and-slaughter procedures and suggests changes for vaccination programs in both elk and bison.
The paper says that states without winter feed grounds, such as Montana, see brucellosis in zero to 3 percent of the elk population, while Wyoming herds average 34 percent, ranging up to 80 percent in extreme cases. Brucellosis is a bacteria that has the potential to spread from wildlife to infect stock.
Transmission from elk to cattle in Sublette and Teton counties led the federal Animal Plant Health Inspection Service to rescind the state’s brucellosis-free status. Two Jackson Hole cattle herds were destroyed and stock shipped from Wyoming must now undergo more extensive surveillance, to the economic detriment of ranchers. Brucellosis causes undulant fever in humans and is the reason for pasteurization. How to combat it in Teton County has opened a debate between conservationists and sportsmen centered mainly on feed grounds.
'Eradication Zones' Prove Ineffective
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
03 Sep 2006
Bob Frye
Hunters believe their wildlife management agency has betrayed them. It's promoting the killing of too many deer, especially does. It's bent on ruining the state's deer hunting traditions. Sound like Pennsylvania? Try Wisconsin.
When officials with that state's Department of Natural Resources officials found chronic wasting disease in their wild deer herd in 2002, they embarked on an aggressive strategy. The plan was to have hunters lower deer densities in so-called "eradication zones" from 35 to about five deer per square mile. The hope was that, if deer numbers were knocked back for a while, the disease would essentially wither away. There's been one problem. Hunters haven't been able or willing to do the job
After spending $30 million, offering dramatically longer seasons, and mandating programs that required hunters to shoot does in order to "earn" a buck tag, Wisconsin has just about as many, if not more, deer in its eradication zone now than it did before, according to surveys done this past winter.
Experts Say Temperature Shift may have Killed Fish
Associated Press (Posted by NBC3 - WSTM.com)
06 Sep 2006
Wildlife experts are looking into what caused the deaths of hundreds -- and possibly thousands -- of fish that have washed up on the New York shores of Lake Erie. People living along the lake in Hamburg, south of Buffalo, say they first spotted the dead and dying fish yesterday morning. Some long-time residents say it's the biggest fish kill in years.
State wildlife biologist Bill Culligan says the fish may have been killed off by a drastic shift in the water temperature caused by recent high winds. He says another possibility could be diseases such as botulism or a new viral disease called V-H-S. The state will test some of the dead fish for both diseases. Culligan says there's no threat to human health, but he advises people not to eat the fish found on shore.
Satellites Help Scientists Track Migratory Birds: GPS the Latest Tool in Fight Against Avian Influenza
USGS
06 Sept 2006
Wearing light solar-powered GPS satellite transmitters, wild swans from Mongolia are winging their way across Eurasia, while land-bound scientists tracking the birds´ journeys on computers say that these unique studies will shed light on how wild birds may be involved in the spread of avian influenza.
In August, a team of international scientists from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) joined the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Mongolian Academy of Sciences (MAS) in the surveillance project, which is part of the Wild Bird Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS) program funded by USAID. The team attached the GPS transmitters to wild whooper swans in an effort to track the birds to their wintering grounds.
Such research is providing information on migration routes and informs governments about potential threats from diseases such as highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI). The HPAI strain known as H5N1 is highly lethal for a variety of species, especially poultry and some waterfowl species. When transmitted to people through close contact with infected birds, the virus can be deadly.
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