Wildlife Disease News Digest

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Penguins wash up closer to equator in Brazil
Yahoo News - news.yahoo.com (Source: Associated Press)
30 Jul 2008
M Astor
Image courtesy of Associated Press
Area: Salvador, Bahia, Brazil - Map It

Penguins from frigid waters near the bottom of the world are washing up closer to the equator than ever before, Brazilian wildlife authorities said Wednesday. Adelson Cerqueira Silva of the federal environmental agency said that about 300 penguins have been found dead or alive in recent days along the coast of Bahia state, better known for sunbathers in bikinis than for seabirds native to Antarctica and Patagonia. Its capital of Salvador is roughly 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) closer to the equator than Miami is and temperatures in the current Southern Hemisphere winter are in the mid-70s (low 20s centigrade). "This is unheard of. There have even been reports of penguins washing up as far as Aracaju," Silva said, referring to a beachside state capital even closer to the equator.

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7 ducks found dead, but cause a mystery
Boston Globe - www.boston.com
31 Jul 2008
J O'Brien
Area: Lowell, Massachusetts, USA - Map It

Lowell officials have been unable to determine what killed at least seven ducks that washed ashore along a 1-mile stretch of the Merrimack River, after ruling out an initial theory that humans were responsible. Residents who found the ducks in recent months along Lowell's Riverwalk pathway reported no obvious injuries to the birds, said Lowell animal control officer Everett Potter. Some suggested pedestrians were harming the birds, but Potter said a mammal probably raided their nests, or disease could have caused the adult deaths. "There are a lot of raccoons along that bank," he said. "With the water low, they raid the nests.

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Acidification of the sea hampers reproduction of marine species
EurekAlert - www.eurekalert.org
29 Jul 2008

By absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and from the human use of fossil fuels, the world's seas function as a giant buffer for the Earth's life support system. The chemical balance of the sea has long been regarded as immovable. Today, researchers know that the pH of the sea's surface water has gone down by 0.1, or 25 percent, just since the beginning of industrialisation just over a century ago. Jon Havenhand and Mike Thorndyke at the University of Gothenburg together with Jane Williamson and Fenina Buttler at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia, have studied how this acidification process affects marine animal life.

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Cited Journal Article
>>>Near-future levels of ocean acidification reduce fertilization success in a sea urchin. Current Biology. 2008 Jul 31. [Epub ahead of print]

Chick die-off reported at pelican colony
Bismarck Tribune - www.bismarcktribune.com (Source: Associated Press)
30 Jul 2008
Area: Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge, Stutsman, North Dakota, USA - Map It

The manager of the Chase Lake National Wildlife Refuge says the pelican colony at the refuge lost a majority of its young this year because of cold, wet weather. "They are born naked and don't have a lot of protective covering on them," Natoma Buskness said. She has no exact count of the number of chicks that died. "It's difficult to get a full number, but it was a hard hit for the colony this year," she said.

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OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Image courtesy of Tim Davenport /WCS