More Emerging Diseases Arise from Asia and the Tropics
Emerging Infectious Diseases On The Rise: Tropical Countries Predicted As Next Hot Spot
ScienceDaily – www.sciencedaily.com
20 Feb 2008
It's not just your imagination. Providing the first-ever definitive proof, a team of scientists has shown that emerging infectious diseases such as HIV, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), West Nile virus and Ebola are indeed on the rise. By analyzing 335 incidents of previous disease emergence beginning in 1940, the study has determined that zoonoses -- diseases that originate in animals -- are the current and most important threat in causing new diseases to emerge. And most of these, including SARS and the Ebola virus, originated in wildlife. Antibiotic drug resistance has been cited as another culprit, leading to diseases such as extremely drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB).
The team -- including University of Georgia professor John Gittleman and scientists from the Consortium for Conservation Medicine, the Institute of Zoology (London) and Columbia University -- recently published their findings in the journal Nature.
The scientists also found that more new diseases emerged in the 1980s than any other decade, "likely due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which led to a range of other new diseases in people," said Mark Levy, deputy director of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESN) at Columbia University.
News.scotman.com (Source: Edinburgh Evening News)
20 Feb 2008
Global warming may be having a minimal effect on our lives so far but average temperatures continue to rise in Edinburgh. Joanna Vallely looks at how the city's fauna is adapting to the changes.
. . . It's this unpredictability that is threatening creatures who have shaped their lifestyles to cope with the four seasons we have traditionally come to expect. For them, changing temperatures can be a matter of life and death.
Animal welfare officers have said they fear for dozens of fox cubs and fledgling birds that will be born too soon this year because of the early onset of spring. Early births in the mild weather mean that, if we suffer a sudden cold snap, the newborns may still be too little to survive.
On a grander scale, Sasha and Yuri, Edinburgh Zoo's pair of Siberian tigers, are being moved north to the Highland Wildlife Park, where it's said they will enjoy the chillier Cairngorms climes.
FCC must weigh new towers' risk to birds
Los Angeles Times – www.latimes.com
20 Feb 2008
J Puzzanghera
Location: United States
When considering new communications towers, a federal court ruled Tuesday, officials need to consider whether they pose safety risks -- to birds.
The Federal Communications Commission must study the effect of rapidly sprouting communications towers on migratory birds and give the public a chance to request environmental reviews on new tower applications, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says that millions of warblers, thrushes and other birds die each year because continuously burning lights atop those towers can disorient them in bad weather.
The 2-1 decision affects only towers along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida, a major route for migrating birds.
Poison suspected in die-off of crows near Dover
The Expositor – www.brantfordexpositor.ca
20 Feb 2008
M Sonnenberg
Location: Port Dover, Ontario, Canada
Wildlife authorities are investigating a large die-off of crows. Nearly 200 of the birds were found dead in two locations east of Port Dover last weekend.
One group was reported near Highway 6, while the other was located on Lakeshore Road, south of the U.S. Steel plant, in Nanticoke.
"It's unexplained," said Audrey Heagy, a conservation biologist at Bird Studies Canada in Port Rowan. "It could be disease or a poisoning. It's likely not the weather. It's unusual."
Dead birds were gathered Tuesday and shipped to the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre in Guelph. Tissue samples will be analyzed to pinpoint the cause.
Evolutionary History Of SARS Supports Bats As Virus Source
ScienceDaily – www.sciencedaily.com
20 Feb 2008
Scientists who have studied the genome of the virus that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) say their comparisons to related viruses offer new evidence that the virus infecting humans originated in bats.
The analysis tracing the viruses’ paths through human and animal hosts counters assertions that SARS was eradicated in 2004 when thousands of palm civet cats in China were identified as the original source and killed in an effort to eliminate the risk of new outbreaks.
According to this new analysis, humans actually appear to be the source of the virus found in those civets, a wild game animal considered a delicacy in southern China.
Ivory Gulls Mysteriously DisappearCurrent Results - www.currentresults.com
Posted on 20 Feb 2008
Location: Bafflin Island, Nunavut, Canada
Colonies of ivory gulls nesting on gravel plateaus of northwestern Baffin Island used to be so thick that local Inuit mistook the birds from a distance for patches of snow. Surveys in the last few years have recorded a precipitous decline in birds breeding on the Island, and abandonment of 13 historic nesting sites. In 2006, a thorough search of gull habitat on Baffin Island found only one pair.
While Baffin Island's Brodeur Peninsula has undergone the most dramatic drop in ivory gulls, that's not the only recent loss. Scientists conclude that ivory gulls nesting in Canada have decreased in number by 70 to 80% since the early 1980s. The 2006 census for the country was 842 individuals. This information prompted COSEWIC (Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada) to change the bird's status in 2006 from special concern to endangered. Ivory gulls, Pagophila eburnean, stand apart from all other seabirds as the lone species in the Pagophila genus. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia - Colony Collapse Disorder
Related Articles
>>> Colony Dynamics and Persistence of Ivory Gull Breeding in Canada. Avian Conservation and Ecology. 2007; 2(2): 8.2006.
>>> COSEWIC assessment and update status report on the Ivory Gull Pagophila eburnea in Canada. 2006
Photo courtesy of Wikipedia - Colony Collapse Disorder
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