Unusual Seabird Mortality Recorded on the Oregon Coast
Newport News-Times
6 Apr 2007
J Evans
Area: Oregon, USA
Photo Courtesy of J Evans
January through March 2007, more beached dead seabirds than usual have been counted in Lincoln County and elsewhere on the Pacific Coast. Dead birds found in unusually high numbers include rhinoceros auklet, horned puffin, tufted puffin and marbled murrelet, among others. It is unclear what is causing the prevalence of dead birds, and whether the event is ongoing.
"Something is definitely different in the ocean this year for those species," said Roy Lowe, with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), "These birds are often the bellwether of what is going on underwater. If you are not out there collecting data on plankton or fish, dead birds might be the first thing you see. Especially when you see birds dying on such a length of coastline, it tells you something is going on."
Tropical Disease Appears in Northwest: Australian Fungus has Killed 8 People in British Columbia
San Fransisco Chronicle
8 Apr 2007
D Struck
Area: Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
The mystery emerged slowly, its clues maddeningly diverse. Sally Lester, an animal pathologist at a British Columbia laboratory, slipped a slide under her microscope -- a tissue from a dog on Vancouver Island. Her lens focused on a tiny cell that looked like a boiled egg. It was late 1999. She had started seeing a lot of those.
On the eastern side of the island, several dead porpoises washed ashore early the next year. Scientist Craig Stephen, who runs a research center on the island, slit one open. He found its lungs seized by pneumonia and its other organs swollen by strange, flowerlike tumors.
CWD Discovered in White-tailed Deer
Canoe Network
11 Apr 2007
J Spigott
Area: Alberta, Canada
The fight against Chronic Wasting Disease in Alberta has taken a new twist as officials have uncovered the first case of CWD in a white-tailed deer.
The fight against Chronic Wasting Disease in Alberta has taken a new twist as officials have uncovered the first case of CWD in a white-tailed deer. The infected deer, which was culled from the Empress-Acadia Valley area of the province in late March, is the first white-tailed deer in Alberta to be confirmed with the disease. The finding has raised the concern of Alberta Fish and Wildlife officials, who are speculating the reasons for the first positive test in an Alberta white-tailed deer.
“Of the 449 deer we collected down there, we have three new positives,” said Lyle Fullerton, communications officer for Alberta Sustainable Resource Development. “One of those three was a white-tailed – we have not had a positive case of CWD in a wild white-tailed prior to this.” Until the discovery, CWD in Alberta had previously been confined to mule deer, but Fullerton says it is not uncommon for other regions to have CWD in white-tailed deer. He pointed to Saskatchewan – where 35 out of the 148 reported cases of CWD have been in white-tailed deer – and Wisconsin, where every reported case of CWD has been in a white-tailed deer.
Oh Deer, What a Problem: Berrien County, Michigan DNR at Odds Over Fate of Exotic Animals
South Bend Tribune
7 Apr 2007
C Draeger
Area: Michigan, USA
Berrien County is in a catfight with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources over two fallow deer. The DNR wants the animals, which are not native to North America, euthanized so they can be tested for bovine tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease. DNR officials say under state law the county is committing a felony by not killing the deer to test for the disease.
By law captive wildlife animals that have been running loose must be killed within 48 hours of their capture. The county's animal control department, meanwhile, which has been holding the exotic animals for nine months, wants to keep them alive. Or, at the very least, the county wants the DNR -- if it insists on killing the deer -- to reimburse the county the $900 feeding costs the county has shelled out to care for the deer.
>>>FULL ARTICLE
Related Links
>>>Berrien County Government
>>>Michigan Department of Natural Resources
>>>Deer Forest Fun Park
Related Links
>>>Berrien County Government
>>>Michigan Department of Natural Resources
>>>Deer Forest Fun Park
Lyme Disease Vaccine Proteins are Patented [Press Release]
United Press International (Posted by ScienceDaily)
9 Apr 2007
Area: Upton, New York, USA
U.S. government scientists received a patent for developing combination proteins for possible use against Lyme disease. The researchers at the Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., in collaboration with scientists at Stony Brook University, said the proteins they developed could advance the development of vaccines and diagnostic tests for Lyme disease. The genetically engineered proteins combine pieces of two proteins that are normally present on the surface of the bacterium that causes Lyme disease but at different parts of the organism's life cycle.
"Combining pieces of these two proteins into one chimeric protein should trigger a 'one-two-punch' immune response more capable of fending off the bacterium than either protein alone," said Brookhaven biologist John Dunn. "These chimeric proteins could also be used as diagnostic reagents that distinguish disease-causing strains of bacteria from relatively harmless ones, and help assess the severity of an infection," Dunn said.
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