Wildlife Disease News Digest

Hamlin Turbines Could Affect Flying Wildlife
13WHAM - www.13wham.com
15 Jan 2008
Area: New York United States

On Monday night, the Hamlin town board voted to extend a moratorium on wind development until June, unless leaders adopt a wind turbine law sooner. Some animal advocates say the town is a migration stop and wind turbines could have deadly consequences for birds and bats. Over the 28 years, Kathy Habgood has lived within a mile of Lake Ontario, she's fed and photographed her wild visitors. “Geese, swans, I've seen of course, probably 100 of the turkey buzzards that had landed at our neighbor's house next door,” she said.

Habgood and others fear if Hamlin’s wind test towers are replaced by turbines, migrating birds like hawks and owls, as well as bats will fly into the rotating blades. Braddock Bay, a haven for migratory birds in the spring and fall, is just down the shore. So, the Genesee Valley Audubon Society and other environmental advocates wrote letters to Hamlin leaders, urging them to avoid putting towers within five miles of the south shore of Lake Ontario. June Summers, president of the GVAS, said, “We don't know how much, how many birds are killed. There's a quote of two birds per wind tower, per year right now.”

>>>FULL ARTICLE [with video]

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Sea otter study reveals striking variability in diets and feeding strategies
Science Centric - www.sciencecentric.com
15 Jan 2008
Area: California United States

Ecologists have long observed that when food becomes scarce, animal populations exploit a wider range of food sources. So scientists studying southern sea otters at different sites in California’s coastal waters were not surprised to find that the dietary diversity of the population is higher where food is limited. But this diversity was not reflected in the diets of individual sea otters, which instead showed dietary specialisation in response to limited food. The new findings by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, will be published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of 14 January.

. . . ‘The traditional way of viewing the relationships between predators and prey and how food webs are structured may be oversimplified,’ Tinker said. ‘When you look at the population as a whole, you may see a diversification of the diet in response to limited food resources. But when you look at individuals, you see dietary specialisation.’ One implication of this dietary specialisation for California sea otters is that some otters may be exposed to certain food-borne pathogens much more frequently than otters with different diets. ‘A lot of sea otters in the Central Coast population are dying from infectious diseases, and this could help us to better understand that disease mortality by allowing us to pinpoint the specific vectors of disease transmission,’ Tinker said.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Cited Journal Article
>>>Food limitation leads to behavioral diversification and dietary specialization in sea otters

Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated

USGS National Wildlife Health Center
15 Jan 2008
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 Jan 10, 2008 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.

>>> Updated Wildlife Mortality Event Table

Climate change threatening bird species, RSPB says
Guardian - www.guardian.co.uk
15 Jan 2008
J Aldred
Area: England United Kingdom

The RSPB today called for urgent action to cut greenhouse gas emissions to avoid a 'calamitous' impact on birds. A new report published today by the conservation charity shows that if climate change is not slowed down, the potential distribution of average bird species by the end of this century will shift nearly 342 miles (550km) to the north-east – equivalent to the distance from Plymouth to Newcastle. The report, A Climatic Atlas of European Breeding Birds, maps potential change in distribution of all the continent's regularly occurring nesting birds against a temperature rise of 3C. It shows that the average European bird's distribution will be reduced in size by 20%, and its future range will overlap its current by only 40%.

Three-quarters of all Europe's nesting birds are likely to suffer declines in range, according to the report, published as a partnership between the RSPB, Durham and Cambridge universities, Lynx, BirdLife International and the European Bird Census council. Some species, including the black-throated diver, snow bunting, capercaillie and dotterel, could be left with few areas of suitable climate in the UK. Without action to protect populations now and ensure that they can find suitable habitats in future, this could significantly increase their risk of extinction, the report warns. Efforts must be increased to maintain existing protected areas and to extend their coverage in the future to accommodate changes in potential distributions.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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Fishy deaths on Green Island still under investigation
The Central News Agency (Posted by www.taipeitimes.com)
09 Jan 2008
Area: Taiwan China

The deaths of a large amount of coral and deep sea fish off the coast of Green Island (綠島) over the past month remains a mystery, members of a special team in charge of the probe said yesterday. The special team was formed by the Eastern Coastal Patrol Office, the Taitung County Government's fishery office and the Lutao township office, after residents on Green Island, better known locally as Lutao (綠島), reported waves of dead fish being swept ashore daily, beginning on Dec. 21. To date, no definitive cause for the massive die-off has been identified. Seeking answers, the team will conduct further toxicity tests on sea water taken from the beach where dead fish have been found, research team members said.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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