Wildlife Disease News Digest

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Bat disease fear prompts closing of popular Uniontown cave
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - www.pittsburghlive.com
28 Apr 2008
Photo courtesy of USGS
Area: Pennsylvania United States -- Map It

Concern that a mysterious disease responsible for killing thousands of bats in the Northeast has prompted state officials to close a popular Fayette County cave. Biologists have found bats with what appears to be a white fungus dubbed "white nose syndrome" in Barton Cave near Uniontown. Department of Conservation and Natural Resources biologist Aura Stauffer says officials suspect bats have the fungus. They're awaiting test results.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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Ten villages monitoring spring migrants for avian flu
Tundra Drums - thetundradrums.com
25 Apr 2008
D Solberg
Area: Alaska United States

This spring, Danny Mann will be on the front lines of the avian influenza surveillance effort in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Though the highly contagious H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu, as it’s commonly called, has never appeared anywhere in North America, public health and wildlife professionals are monitoring birds at the leading edge of the spring migration. For his part, Mann has signed on as a testing manager with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corp. environmental health department to collect 300 samples from subsistence hunters in his village of Kipnuk.

"They give me a call on the phone or VHF and I go over to their house with my stuff. We’re like a mobile unit," he said. "I have gloves, swabs and some vials to put the swabs in. And of course, I document what kind of bird, where it was caught, male, female." For their effort, participating hunters receive two steel shot shotgun shells –in both 2-3/4- and 3-inch shells, and No. 2 and BB shot sizes – for each bird presented for sampling. In all, 10 Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages are participating in the YKHC surveillance effort. The local subsistence surveillance effort is part of a larger program in Alaska led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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>>>Tripping Up Avian Flu
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Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated
USGS National Wildlife Health Center
28 Apr 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 Apr 24, 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

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of Deborah Olsen/www.elephantcare.org