Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES

Recovery Efforts Not Enough For Critically Endangered Asian Vulture
ScienceDaily - www.sciencedaily.com
10 Sep 2008
Image courtesy of ScienceDaily/Munir Virani Adding wild birds to the captive colonies, located in Pakistan and India, is crucial, but political and logistical barriers are hampering efforts, says lead author Jeff A. Johnson. The study was published online August 15 in the journal Biological Conservation. With a seven-foot wingspan, the oriental white-backed vulture (Gyps bengalensis) was an awesome presence in south Asia until the mid-1990s, when populations began to collapse.

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Bird disease prompts closure of Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge
Grand Forks Herald - www.grandforksherald.com
12 Sep 2008
B Dokken
Area: Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge, Minnesota - Map It

Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge in northwestern Minnesota has closed temporarily to the public after a virulent strain of Newcastle’s disease was confirmed in a sick American white pelican that refuge staff found in July. The disease can be especially contagious to cormorants and pelicans, and the virulent strain found at Agassiz also can cause high death rates to domestic poultry that aren’t vaccinated. The disease poses minimal risk to humans.

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Bringing back Bighorns
Jackson Hole Star-Tribune - www.jacksonholestartrib.com
12 Sep 2008
C Merrill
Image courtesy of Jim Laybourn, Star-Tribune

This summer, just south of here, hundreds of visitors to the Shoshone National Forest and Sinks Canyon State Park have enjoyed what has become a relatively rare opportunity: They've had up-close sightings of full-grown, healthy bighorn sheep. In many cases the rams have sauntered within a few feet of the gawkers' vehicles, paying the people little to no mind. And the visitors have had the chance to observe the brawny rams in all their famous splendor -- with their 20-pound curling horns and their bright, caramel-colored eyes, which are as efficient as 10-power binoculars.

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Feds set regulations on fish shipment in Great Lakes region to contain deadly virus outbreak
Chicago Tribune - www.chicagotribune.com
11 Sep 2008
J Flesher

Federal regulators trying to contain a fish-killing virus in the Great Lakes region have issued rules for shipping live fish across state lines that some wholesalers say will be financially devastating. The requirements were announced Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. They require testing and inspections of 28 farm-raised and live bait species susceptible to viral hemorrhagic septicemia, or VHS.

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No clinical Signs of Viral Ganglioneuritis in First Batch from Wild
Tasmanian Government Media Releases - www.media.tas.gov/au
12 Sep 2008
A Schapp

Laboratory examination of tissue samples from about 60 wild abalone taken from an area of interest off the southern Channel has revealed no evidence of Abalone Viral Ganglioneuritis. DNA tests for the virus in these fish by the Australian Animal Health Laboratory at Geelong will be available early next week. The General Manager of Biosecurity and Product Integrity, Alex Schaap, cautioned against reading too much into the negative histological (tissue) analysis. “I have to point out that two of the abalone in the infected processing facility which tested DNA-positive for AVG were negative when examined microscopically,” Mr Schaap said.

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Wild Animals Suffer on 'Junk Food' Diets
YahooNews - news.yahoo.com
10 Sep 2008
S Reeves

In the Baltic Sea, birds called common guillemots raise their young on herringlike fish called sprat. In the 1990s, local sprat became unusually abundant after populations of their main predator, cod, plunged because of overfishing and climatic changes. Yet during that time, guillemot chicks grew poorly. Why? The answer may lie in the "junk food hypothesis," which holds that poor-quality food can hamper the reproductive success of marine predators just as badly as low-quantity food.

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