Wildlife Disease News Digest

As fish die in droves in Virginia, scientists seek clues
The Virginian-Pilot - hamptonroads.com
19 Apr 2008
S Harper
Area: Virginia United States -- Map It

The James River, so wide and deep in Hampton Roads, is skinny and shallow as it rolls past this hilly town in the Shenandoah Valley. Bass boats buzz up and down the greenish current here, and anglers can be seen on most spring days casting a lazy line from shore. On one of these sunny spring days recently, scientists set up a makeshift lab in a shady spot along the James, with tables and rubber gloves, razors and clipboards – even a blood analyzer and a mobile refrigerator to hold body parts and suspect tissues. They were looking for sick fish, especially smallmouth bass, the most popular sport fish in the region, which have been dying in droves in recent years throughout the Shenandoah Valley.

The victims often are flecked with bloody lesions and sores. They tend to swim aimlessly, as if drunk, before succumbing and going still. In 2005, an estimated 80 percent of all adult smallmouth bass and redbreast sunfish died in this fashion over a four-month period in the nearby South Fork of the Shenandoah River. More lesions and fish kills occurred the following spring in the North Fork of the Shenandoah, not far from national forests, historic sites and canoe passages.

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When Tuberculosis Hits Animals
VOA News - www.voanews.com
21 Apr 2008
Area: Minnesota United States

. . . But currently, the state of Michigan in the Midwest is fighting an outbreak of tuberculosis in cattle. Experts identified wild deer as the source of infection. More recently the neighboring state of Minnesota has also had to deal with TB in cattle and deer. Cows and wild deer can infect each other -- for example, if they share cattle feed left in fields during winter. Possible solutions might include building fences or leaving smaller amounts of hay.

Michigan's agriculture director announced this month that the state will receive more than three million dollars in emergency federal aid. Michigan will use the money to increase prevention and testing activities, and to pay farmers who have to destroy infected cattle. Since nineteen ninety-four, the state has spent close to one hundred million dollars on control efforts. Michigan officials say no TB has been found in cattle outside the containment area.

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Deadly fungus that could make amphibians the new dinosaurs
News.scotsman.com
22 Apr 2008
J Haworth
Area: Scotland United Kingdom

The entire population of the world's frogs and other amphibians could be wiped out by a deadly fungus within three decades, experts have warned. Biologists say a strain of the chytrid virus that kills frogs, toads, newts and other amphibians could spell the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs. Species resistant to it, including the cane toad, are spreading it throughout the world. The chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, infects all kinds of amphibians and causes the fatal disease chytridiomycosis.

Iain Stephen, of London Zoo, said: "Frogs, toads, newts, salamanders and caecilians, which are limbless, almost eel-like amphibians, are all under threat. "There are 6,000 species of amphibians in the world and over two-thirds of them are in decline," he said. "That's a higher percentage than any other animal group. "It's the biggest decline taking place on the planet. Over the next 20 or 30 years we could be talking about the biggest mass extinction since the dinosaurs." In the past few years more than 100 species of frogs have become extinct. In Scotland it could be the end of much-loved creatures often seen in the garden, such as the common toad.

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OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of the Star Tribune