Canada Joins the International Coalition Against Wildlife Trafficking [News Release Remarks]
U.S. Department of State
12 Apr 2007
. . . The illegal trade in wildlife may also contribute to many life threatening infectious diseases such as avian flu and SARS and our international cooperation to detect, tract and treat these diseases is really undermined by this illegal trade. And then, perhaps most importantly to some, in addition to the threat to extinction, wildlife trafficking is often really closely linked to other international organized crime activities. It involves some of the same offenders that engage in smuggling and trafficking in arms and drugs and people. So this is an attack against crime as well.
Currently, by conservative estimates, there's a $10 billion annual trade in wildlife products on the black market. It's high profit, it's low risk and it's attracted the attention of many international criminal syndicates. The U.S. federal enforcement agencies, our customs officials, our fish and wildlife inspectors and many, many others work at our borders to curb this illegal trade and as good a job as they do it became very clear to us a couple of years ago that the U.S. could not stop this illegal trade all by itself.
And so we knew we needed help. We went to our international friends and partners in the NGO community and industry and in other governments, conservation groups, a whole list of people which I'm going to read to you in a minute because it's a really impressive group. But what we decided we would do is form the coalition about a year and a half ago that had three goals: to improve wildlife enforcement by creating wildlife enforcement cooperation such as the ASEAN Wildlife Enforcement Network that's recently been created in the Asia Area; also to reduce consumer demand for illegally traded wildlife through public awareness campaigns; and then perhaps most important and what we're demonstrating here today is to show high level political support for putting an end to wildlife trafficking and we've not only done that through our partner countries but we've also put it on the agenda of the G-8 environment ministers' meetings, the leaders' meeting and other international fora where these issues are discussed.
Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center UpdatedUSGS National Wildlife Health Center
16 Apr 2007
Area: United States
USGS and a network of partners across the country work on documenting wildlife mortality events in order to provide timely and accurate information on locations, species and causes of death. This information was updated on April 16, 2007 on the USGS National Wildlife Health Center web page, New and Ongoing Wildlife Mortality Events Nationwide. Quarterly Mortality Reports are also available from this page. These reports go back to 1995.
H5N1 in Wild Hawk in Japan Was Qinghai Strain - Archive Number 20070422.1315
International Society for Infectious Diseases - ProMED-mail
18 Apr 2007
Area: Japan
As announced by the government's Ministry of the Environment on Tuesday [18 Apr 2007], a wild Mountain Hawk Eagle -- which had been found alive during January 2007 in the village of Sagara, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyusyu Island, but which had died shortly afterwards -- was found to be infected by H5N1 virus belonging to the Qinghai Lake strain. This strain was similar to the strain found in 2 chicken farms in Miyazaki and Okayama Prefecture this year [2007]. Confirmation was by gene analysis by the team of Tottori University.
What's Killing the Bees?
The Palm Beach Post
22 Apr 2007
S Salisbury
Area: Florida
Steve Bentley thought he was doing the right thing. In February, the beekeeper reported to state regulators that thousands of his honeybees had died that month after the pesticide Lorsban was sprayed in a Sebring citrus grove. His bees were in their man-made hives across a canal from The Great Fruit Co. grove, but a cloud of poison drifted from the fruit trees and onto his insects. He saw the devastation when he checked his hives the morning of Feb. 7.
"The ground was covered with thousands of dead bees," said Bentley, 45, whose Sebring business is called Bentley and Sons Honey. The ensuing state investigation confirmed that the pesticide had been sprayed even though bees were in the area - contrary to federal law - and regulators issued a technical-violation warning letter to the subcontractor that applied the chemical. But ever since filing the report, Bentley says he's been banned from the area, where he's been placing his bees since the early 1980s, by citrus farmers. He lost two of his "best bee yards," as well as at least $5,000 when the bees and their honey were wiped out, he says.
Science Unchained: The Need for Free Speech
Interciencia (Posted by scidiv.net)
20 Apr 2007
The freedom to express ideas and opinions guarantees public understanding of science and helps scientists realise society's needs, argues Jaime Requena in this Interciencia editorial. Requena refers to Claudio Mendoza, former head of a computational-physics laboratory in the Caracas-based Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research, who recently published an article criticizing Venezuela's nuclear energy policy. Mendoza was dismissed from his post and has faced calls from the government to be tried for treason (see Venezuela Researcher demoted for nuclear wisecrack).
Sheep Flock Falls Victim to Rare Form of Scrapie
Farmnews.co.nz
23 Apr 2007
Area: Wyoming USA
About 300 sheep in Wyoming will be killed this week - a farmer's whole flock - because they have tested positive to a rare strain of scrapie - Nor98. The sheep will be transported live out of state and taken to a slaughter plant where they will be euthanized, their brains and lymph node tissue harvested for testing. Scrapie is a disease found in sheep and goats that's similar to mad cow disease in cattle and chronic wasting disease in deer and elk. Scrapie is rare in the United States. Out of more than 115,000 animals tested since 2003, only 300 have tested positive; federal officials hope to eliminate scrapie from US herds by the end of 2010.
But the Wyoming rancher's case is even more rare: Fewer than 300 cases of the particular strain have been recorded worldwide since it was first diagnosed in Norway in 1998. There are no known human health risks associated with scrapie so farmers in Wyoming are not alarmed by the find. The farmer, whose identity is being kept secret, will be paid an indemnity fee by the Government based on fair market value for the sheep. The farmer had not had to kill off his flock - he did have the option of quarantining them but he would have been unable to sell any breeding animals for several years.
Journal Article(s) of Interest
Novel Hantavirus Sequences in Shrew, Guinea [free full-text available]
Emerg Infect Dis. 2007 Mar;13(3):[Epub ahead of print]
B Kempla et al.
TB-infected Deer Are More Closely Related than Non-infected Deer [online abstract only]
Biology letters. 2007 Feb 22;3(1):103-5
JA Blanchong et al.
Movements of Birds and Avian Influenza from Asia into Alaska [free full-text available]
Emerg Infect Dis. 2007 Apr;13(4):[Epub ahead of print]
K Winker et al.
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