Wildlife Disease News Digest

Threatened frogs leaving downtown S.F.
San Francisco Chronicle - www.sfgate.com
18 Mar 2008
D Perlman
Area: California United States

A batch of tiny frogs from Madagascar, their race threatened with extinction, is quietly keeping house and reproducing inside the soon-to-be-abandoned California Academy of Sciences building on Howard Street in San Francisco. They're amphibians, which all face extinction as a mysterious fungal disease spreads around the world, as habitats are lost to cities and suburban subdivisions widen, as wooded land is cleared for farms in food-short nations, and as global warming dries up swamps and wetlands all over the planet. But scientists are trying now to rescue as many threatened amphibian species as they can by gathering them in from the wild and breeding them in captivity to increase their numbers. The plan is to return entire populations to the wild one day wherever governments can ensure their territories are safe.

All amphibians - frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and the obscure worm-like ones you've never heard of called caecilians - are at risk these days, scientists say, and are part of the worldwide rescue plan. Nicole Chaney, a 28-year-old academy biologist, who says "geckos are really my thing" - although they're reptiles, not amphibians - is focusing on one frog species right now, but has her eyes on more. She is breeding 30 minuscule members of the frog tribe called golden mantellas, whose meager population on the island nation of Madagascar is so seriously endangered that the Malagasy government has banned their export entirely.

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Bat die-off is serious
Adirondack Daily Enterprise - www.adirondackdailyenterprise.com
18 Mar 2008
D Lynch
Area: New York United States

Hundreds of thousands of bats in New York are now believed to be affected by white-nose syndrome, a fatal condition that is jeopardizing the future of this state’s bat population. Of the nearly 20 caves and mines that state Department of Environmental Conservation biologist Al Hicks is aware of the DEC surveying this winter, all but three had bats with white-nose syndrome in them, he said. That breaks down to about 400,000 bats affected. “It’s almost everything we have,” Hicks said. “It’s about as bad as we can get.”

The mortality rate of bats with white-nose syndrome is 90 to 97 percent, Hicks said. Last year up to 11,000 bats died in four caves, Hicks said. The syndrome first appeared last winter about 12 miles west of Albany, Hicks said. The radius spread out about seven miles last year, he said. This year it is at least 80 miles. Bats with white-nose syndrome usually have a white fungus around their noses and occasionally other parts of their bodies. It is unknown whether the white fungus is causing the bats to die or if it is a symptom.

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Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park to be targeted for study of animals, parasites
Mongolia Web - www.mongolia-web.com
18 Mar 2008
Area: Mongolia

An American university will join forces with Mongolian universities to study the diverse biology found in Gobi Gurvan Saikhan National Park in southern Mongolia. Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln will work with the National University of Mongolia to study the biodiversity of small mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and their parasites in Mongolia. Called the Mongolian Vertebrate Parasite Project for UNL, Scott L. Gardner, curator of the H.W. Manter Laboratory of Parasitology at the University of Nebraska will lead the project.

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OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of Florida Panther NWR/USFWS