Wildlife Disease News Digest

Deformed beaks mean slow starvation for region's birds; cause a
mystery
Seattle Post-Intelligencer - seattlepi.nwsource.com
31 Mar 2008
R McClure
Area: United States

In his back yard in Fremont, Nikos Anton spotted a house sparrow that seemed to be toting a twig in its beak. But when he looked a little closer, Anton saw the "stick" was actually the grotesquely misshapen and overgrown top half of the bird's beak. "Look at that!" he said, pointing to his pictures of the bird. "It's like an elephant trunk. ... It's a very odd thing happening here in Seattle." But it's not just here. This "long-billed syndrome" has been recorded in about 160 birds by a Skagit County researcher, mostly in Western Washington and southern British
Columbia and mostly since 2000.

It's also documented in more than 2,100 birds in Alaska, where the phenomenon seems to have started affecting lots of birds in the early 1990s. Researchers say the weird beaks appear to be concentrated in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, although reports are coming in from farther south -- from Southern California in one case earlier this month. What's the cause? That remains a mystery. A small band of puzzled, poorly funded scientists is scrambling to find answers. Could it be chemicals? Something genetic? A disease? Maybe a combination?

>>> FULL ARTICLE [includes video]

Salmonella hits Arkansas birds
Baxter Bulletin - www.baxterbulletin.com
01 Apr 2008
Area: Arkansas United States

An outbreak of avian salmonella has been confirmed in Camden. The outbreak was confirmed by the National Wildlife Health Center through bird specimens submitted by the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. There are other suspected outbreaks in the Little Rock area, as well. The disease outbreaks are not unusual, given the fluctuating weather conditions in Arkansas this late winter and early spring.

According to AGFC nongame migratory bird program leader Karen Rowe, the confirmed case in south Arkansas affects wild birds using bird feeders.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

The plot thickens
Deccan Herald - www.deccanherald.com
01 Apr 2008
K Awasthi
Area: India

The mystery of gharial deaths in the Chambal waters continues to elude scientists. More than 90 of the critically endangered species have died since early December, all within a stretch of about 25 km of the river flowing along the Uttar Pradesh-Madhya Pradesh border. Nobody seems to know the reason. In a January 28
meeting of the Crisis Management Group, set up by the Union Government to look into possible causes and draw an action plan, veterinarians and conservationists could not pinpoint the causes of deaths. The Society for Conservation of Nature, an Etawah-based NGO, reported the first death in the first week of December 2007. By the end of the month, 40 gharials had died.

. . . IVRI scientists also found that in most cases the gharial’s stomach was empty. But conservationists rule out starvation, saying there is enough prey base in the river for gharials. Filmmaker Naresh Bedi, who made the first documentary on gharials, says this claim is not based on studies of the prey base. It is worth noting that all the deaths occurred between the bridge at Sahnso and Udi village in Etawah. This stretch is part of the 400 km of the river protected under the National Chambal Sanctuary. “The stretch has a high density of gharials.

Due to illegal fishing and continuous human presence, there is a possibility that gharials are not getting enough time for basking,” says Rom Whitaker, chairman of the Gharial Conservation Alliance, an independent international mission.

>>> FULL ARTICLE

Crows negative for AI strains
Coshocton Tribune - www.coshoctontribune.com
31 Mar 2008
Area: California United States

Mark Frank, director of Environmental Health with the Coshocton City Health Department, recently received results from a crow roost die-off. Two of the crows collected during the January 2008 crow die-off were tested for Avian Influenza (AI) at the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Animal Disease Diagnostics Laboratory in Reynoldsburg.

The birds were found to be negative for all strains of AI. An additional carcass was sent to the United States Geological Survey, National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis. At this time, according to Craig Hicks,
Wildlife Disease Biologist with the USDA in a letter to Frank, the diagnosis posted on the NWHC’s Web site is Enteritis: hemorrhagic, Viral Infection Suspect; NOS.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Related News
>>>Avian Influenza Update: wild bird monitoring area lifted [Press Release]

Did Your Shopping List Kill a Songbird?
New York Times - www.nytimes.com
30 Mar 2008
B Stutchbury
Image courtesy of Olaf Hajek

Though a consumer may not be able to tell the difference, a striking red and blue Thomas the Tank Engine made in Wisconsin is not the same as one manufactured in China — the paint on the Chinese twin may contain dangerous levels of lead. In the same way, a plump red tomato from Florida is often not the same as one grown in Mexico. The imported fruits and vegetables found in our shopping carts in winter and early spring are grown with types and amounts of pesticides that would often be illegal in the United States. In this case, the victims are North American songbirds. Bobolinks, called skunk blackbirds in some places, were once a common sight in the Eastern United States.

In mating season, the male in his handsome tuxedo-like suit sings deliriously as he whirrs madly over the hayfields. Bobolink numbers have plummeted almost 50 percent in the last four decades, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. The birds are being poisoned on their wintering grounds by highly toxic pesticides. Rosalind Renfrew, a biologist at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, captured bobolinks feeding in rice fields in Bolivia and took samples of their blood to test for pesticide exposure. She found that about half of the birds had drastically reduced levels of cholinesterase, an enzyme that affects brain and nerve cells — a sign of exposure to toxic chemicals.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of Minnesota Public Radio