Wildlife Disease News Digest

Deadly Parasite Found
WXOW 19 - abcNEWS
26 Jun 2007
Area: Wisconsin, USA

Wildlife officials have discovered another parasite. They learned of this one June fourth. So far, authorities found the parasite in one dead bird on Lake Onalaska. But fish and wildlife experts are taking this new threat seriously and working to prevent more problems. Mark Jankowski Wildlife Disease Specialist says, “This is a new finding in the area." US Fish and Wildlife experts say this new parasite, or flatworm, joins three two other parasites that lead to massive bird die-offs last year on Lake Onalaska.

Experts say this new parasite has the ability to cause just as much damage. Jankowski says, "this new one bores into the intestine and causes leakage, can cause an infection in the bird's body cavity." The only confirmed case of a waterfowl dieing from this new parasite on Lake Onalaska was this spring. An affected coot was found dead with about 600 worms in its intestine. Jim Nissen US Fish and Wildlife Expert says, "The bird dies off 3-8 days after ingestion of enough tremadore parasite or worms."

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Uganda Struggling to Relocate Wildlife
IOL - iol.co.za
26 Jun 2007
Area: Uganda

Wild animals in Uganda's second largest game park are in danger of contracting foot and mouth disease as herdsmen with thousands of cattle are resisting their evacuation, a wildlife official said on Tuesday. The government has been trying to relocate over 10 000 Basongora pastoralists who are raising nearly 20 000 head of cattle in the vast, western Queen Elizabeth National Park but the plans are moving slowly, posing a danger to the park's wildlife.

"The existence of these animals in the park remains a danger as long as the foot and mouth disease has not been wiped out from the cattle," Sam Mwandha, the operations director for the state-owned Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA), told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa. He said the disease may be transmitted to animals in the park like rare antelopes, waterbucks and buffalo.

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Mystery Bee Disease May Destroy Hives Worldwide
ocregister
25 Jun 2007

U.S. farmers depend on imported bees as disorder surfaces in more countries.

A malady that has decimated millions of U.S. honeybees and is threatening $14.6 billion of crops is also harming hives in Asia, Europe and South America, said a scientist scheduled to testify before Congress tomorrow. The disease known as Colony Collapse Disorder has been reported in Taiwan, Brazil, Spain and several other countries, May Berenbaum, head of the University of Illinois entomology department, told an audience today on Capitol Hill in Washington. The death of bees used commercially to pollinate almonds, apples and oranges in the U.S. so far hasn't harmed those crops partly because of bee imports.

Global collapse would curtail that option, Berenbaum said. "There are limits as to how far they can go" with imports, she said. U.S. bee imports have mainly come from Australia, which hasn't reported colony collapse. The disorder, which killed as much as 90 percent of the bees in some U.S. hives last winter, has been found in 35 states and one Canadian province, according to a survey of beekeepers released last week by Bee Alert Technology Inc., a bee research and beekeeper products company based in Missoula, Montana.

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Analysis: AMA, Vets Team to Battle Disease
United Press International
26 Jun 2007
E Susman

Leaders of the American Medical Association and the American Veterinary Medical Association have pledged new cooperation in the war on animal-borne diseases that ultimately affect humans. In a show of mutual support, Ron Davis, president-elect of the AMA of East Lansing, Mich., and Roger Mahr, president of the AVMA, heartily endorsed a resolution at the AMA House of Delegates under which both organizations would work together in cases involving diseases such as rabies, West Nile virus and avian influenza.

While the AMA has been somewhat reluctant in the past to forge cooperation with non-physician organizations, it has become increasingly apparent that diseases that show up in animals are often an important harbinger of a human outbreak soon to follow. Laura Kahn, an internal medicine specialist and a researcher at the program on science and global security at Princeton University in New Jersey, noted how a synergy between medical and veterinary experts has served as an early-warning system for disease outbreaks in the past.

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