Wildlife Disease News Digest

Beekeepers Attribute Winter Losses to Whims of Weather, not Disease
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – post-gazette.com
24 May 2007
L Barcousky

Unusual weather -- more than a still-mysterious condition called colony collapse disorder -- appears to be the main culprit behind honeybee deaths this winter, according to several apiarists in Western Pennsylvania. While debate continues over causes, many beekeepers agree that mortality rates are higher.

. . . Bad weather is the most likely culprit, he said. A warm January tricked many queens into laying larger numbers of eggs, he speculated. When February arrived, bringing with it weeks of below-freezing temperatures, the adult bees faced the challenge of keeping a bigger-than-normal "brood nest" at a toasty 95 degrees.

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Anglers Wary of Fish Virus
Greater Danbury The News-Times - NewsTimeLIVE.com
24 May 2004
R Miller
Area: New York, USA

People come from far afield to cast a fly into the Housatonic River or to fish for bass in Candlewood Lake. The largest northern pike ever taken in Connecticut waters -- 29 pounds -- was hooked in Lake Lillinonah. There are now established walleye populations in Squantz Pond and the Saugatuck Reservoir.

This is why anglers are paying increased attention to the catastrophic progress of an aquatic virus -- viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS -- in New York. If it jumps the state line, all those favored fisheries could be hammered. "It could be huge," James Marino, manager of the Valley Angler in Danbury, said Wednesday.

"It's in New York now," Torrey Collins, manager of the Housatonic River Outfitters in Cornwall Bridge, said Wednesday. "But if they find it in anyplace in Connecticut, it will be news."

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Source of Infection May Never be Found
Jackson Hole Casper Star-Tribune
24 May 2007
M Stark
Area: Montana, USA

The list of prime suspects in Montana's brucellosis cattle cases is short: elk, bison or other cows. But finding the culprit is no small chore. Investigators face the daunting prospect of tracing back infected animals to see if they had been exposed by other cattle and, short of that, where and when they may have come in contact with the disease left behind by wild animals.

State and federal officials are testing hundreds of samples for the disease after a cow from Bridger was shipped to Iowa and in early May tested positive for the disease.If the disease is confirmed in two herds, Montana would lose its federal brucellosis-free certification and would face expensive testing for cattle shipped out of state.

. . . It could be days, and more likely weeks, before investigators have a firm idea how the disease spread.

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Related Article

'It's a Very Intense thing'

Devils on Road to Ruin?
ABC NewsOnline
24 May 2007
Area: Australia

Road-kill is emerging as yet another threat to the endangered Tasmanian Devil. Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries estimates that 1,700 devils die each year on the state's roads, many of them in areas that are free from the deadly Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease.

A wildlife biologist, Dr Clare Hawkins, says there's great concern that road-kill, coupled with the Facial Tumour Disease, could quicken the demise of the species. Dr Hawkins says devils are particularly vulnerable, as they're similar in colour to roads and use roads for travelling and for scavenging other road-kill as a food source.

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New Bird Flu Outbreak Confirmed in Northern Nigeria
Voice of America - newsVOA.com
G da Costa
24 May 2007
Area: Nigeria, Africa
Photo courtesy of VOA

Health officials in Nigeria have confirmed an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus in another northern state. Gilbert da Costa has more for VOA from Abuja. A spokesman for the Zamfara state ministry of health in northern Nigeria, Aminu Abdulrazak, told reporters that tests on birds showing signs of the H5N1 bird flu confirmed the outbreak.

He said more than 200 birds have so far been culled at an infected farm in Namafara village to minimize the spread of the disease. The first confirmed case of bird flu in Nigeria was reported in February last year. The deadly virus subsequently spread to other parts of the country. Zamfara now joins the long list of Nigerian states that have reported outbreaks since last year.Experts fear this is another sign that the virus may be spreading among poultry farms in Nigeria.

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