Wildlife Disease News Digest

Dead Birds Float Ashore At Great Salt Lake
Science Daily - www.sciencedaily.com (Source: Utah Division Of Wildlife Resources)
05 Apr 2008
Photo courtesy of iStockphoto/Norman Bateman
Area: Utah United States

Don't be surprised if you see of hundreds of dead birds along the southeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake during the next few weeks. More than 15,000 birds died on the lake last fall. Most of the birds were eared grebes. Testing done at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin has confirmed that the birds died of avian cholera. Avian cholera is a disease that sweeps through grebes and other birds on the lake almost every year.

"Avian cholera is caused by a common bacteria that's found all across the country," says Leslie McFarlane, wildlife disease coordinator for the Division of Wildlife Resources. "When the conditions are right, avian cholera takes off. It can spread through a bird population quickly." Even though the birds died last fall, the salt water in the lake has preserved their carcasses. "The birds you see along the shore of the Great Salt Lake may look like they died recently, but they've actually been dead for several months," McFarlane says.

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Four More Deer Test Positive for CWD
West Virginia MetroNews - www.wvmetronews.com
05 Apr 2008
Area: West Virginia United States

Four new cases of chronic wasting disease have been discovered in the containment zone in Hampshire County. DNR biologist say the four new deer were killed in the first week of 2008 spring collection period in the Slanesville/Augusta area. Sharp shooters are regularly used to bring down random deer on the property of cooperation private landowners in the area during these collection periods. A second collection point in Yellow Springs has yet to yield any new positive cases. Officials use the regular collections and testing to define the prevalence of the disease and monitor whether it is spreading to new areas.

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Bat Disease Spreads Across Vermont
WCAX - www.wcax.com
04 Apr 2008
Area: Vermont United States

State wildlife officials confirm that a mysterious disease afflicting bats has been found in five places around Vermont, and is no longer isolated to the western side of the state. Several dead bats found in Norwich and Strafford around the site of the old Elizabeth Mine show signs of white nose syndrome. Bats are hibernating there over the winter. No signs of the disease were found in the Elizabeth Mine when it was last checked about three weeks ago.

This is the first sign of white nose syndrome in the Connecticut River Valley, and a sign that the disease is spreading to the other side of the Green Mountains. "As early as this week we started receiving phone calls from people in the Norwich and Strafford area," said Scott Darling of the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. "We picked up bats picked up by citizens and visited the site again. All the evidence now leads us to the conclusion that white nose syndrome has affected that site."

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Dead Zone Off Texas Coast Existed Since 1985
Science Daily - www.sciencedaily.com (Source: Texas A&M University)
04 Apr 2008
Photo courtesy of NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Area: Texas United States

Researchers at Texas A&M University have confirmed for the first time that a "dead zone" has existed off the Texas coast for at least the past 23 years and will likely remain there, causing potential harmful effects to marine life in the area. Steve DiMarco, associate professor in Texas A&M's College of Geosciences who has studied dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico for more than 15 years, believes the dead zone area off the Texas coast extends from the Texas-Louisiana border area to Brownsville. A dead zone occurs when there is hypoxia, or oxygen-depleted water.

Such low levels of oxygen are believed to be caused by pollution from farm fertilizers as they empty into rivers and eventually the Gulf, or by soil erosion or discharge from sewage treatment plants. "Not all of the area from the Texas-Louisiana coast to Brownsville is a dead zone area, but very much of it is," DiMarco explains. "The Texas dead zone appears to be more patchy and not as continuous as the Louisiana dead zone to the east, but much of the region there has very low oxygen levels, some extremely low." DiMarco recently presented his findings to the 2008 Ocean Sciences Meeting in Orlando, Fla.

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The hoof and mouth disease of the salmon farming industry
The Vancouver Sun - www.canada.com/vancouversun
07 Apr 2008
S Hume

It's been a bruising fortnight for fish farmers. First, a blockbuster story March 27 in the New York Times outlined the difficulties plaguing Chile's salmon farms. Then provincial Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Pat Bell announced a moratorium on expansion of fish farms to the north coast "until we figure out how to move forward with a long-term vision for aquaculture." Next, Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper reported that the Scottish government's Fisheries Research Services found "strong evidence that sea lice from caged salmon contaminate wild fish -- and the problem seems to be getting worse." And this week, word that research in Clayoquot Sound suggests an increased sea lice presence in proximity to salmon farms in a region that was previously considered a "zero lice" zone.

Michael Price, fish biologist for the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, insisted work was preliminary and samples small but confirmed that sea lice loads in plankton trawls near three fish farm sites were an average of 28 times those found at control sites. This follows other research indicating elevated burdens of sea lice on immature wild salmon in the Broughton archipelago and in the Discovery Islands off Campbell River where fish farms are concentrated. The big story, though, is the aftershock from mainstream American media paying attention to Chile, where a lethal, highly communicable and so far incurable virus has been raging through farmed salmon stocks since last July.

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OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS