Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES

Now, the AP grey fowl can resist bird flu outbreak
Economic Times - economictimes.indiatimes.com
16 Dec 2008
SD Amirapu
Photo credit: John Corder/World Pheasant Association, courtesy of Uppsala University
Area: Andhra Pradesh, India

It is a wish come true for scores of poultry owners who are grappling with their business due to the frequent outbreak of bird flu. The Andhra Pradesh Bio-Diversity board has identified a grey jungle fowl in Chittoor district that is resistant to bird flu. The vector from this bird found in Seshachalam hills (in Chittoor district) will be genetically transmitted to other birds to contain the spread of this fatal disease. A vector is a DNA molecule used as a vehicle to transfer foreign genetic material into another cell body. This breakthrough comes as a big relief to poultry owners and traders whose businesses have been hit due to bird flu. Caused by H5N1, a highly fatal virus endemic to birds, this disease has been a potential threat the world over.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Cal State Long Beach Researchers Find Continuing High Levels of DDT, PCB Contamination in Southern California Marine Mammals
AScribe - newswire.ascribe.org
15 Dec 2008
Area: California, United States

From the late 1940s through the early 1970s, Southern California manufacturing firms dumped large quantities of waste laden with the pesticide DDT and the chemical PCB into the Los Angeles County sewer system that ended up in a massive sediment deposit at the end of sewer outfall pipes located off the Palos Verdes Peninsula's White's Point. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than 9 million cubic meters of sediment contaminated with about 110 tons of DDT and 11 tons of PCB spread across more than 40 square kilometers. Because both of these compounds are lipophilic (are absorbed easily in fats), they don't dissolve in water, and therefore have remained concentrated in the area. Certain local fish, particularly the bottom-dwelling white croaker, are known to be contaminated.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Underwater Noise Pollution Harms Marine Life
Voice of America - www.voanews.com
15 Dec 2008
V LaCapra
Photo credit: NOAA
Area: United States

In dark ocean waters, marine mammals such as whales and dolphins rely on sound to communicate with each other, locate prey and find their way over long distances. All these activities - critical to their survival - are being interfered with, experts say, by the increasing levels of noise from ocean-going ship engines, sonar devices and seismic exploration. Climate change could make the noise problems for marine mammals even worse. Christopher Clark is the director of the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University in New York state. He says that part of his personal discovery over the last 15 years has been the incredible richness of the ocean in terms of the songs and the voices of whales.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Ocean Fish Farming Harms Wild Fish, Study Says
ScienceDaily - www.sciencedaily.com (Source: University of Hawaii at Manoa)
16 Dec 2008
Photo credit: Alexandra Morton/Raincoast Research

Farming of fish in ocean cages is fundamentally harmful to wild fish, according to an essay in this week's Conservation Biology. Using basic physics, Professor Neil Frazer of the Department of Geology and Geophysics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa explains how farm fish cause nearby wild fish to decline. The foundation of his paper is that higher density of fish promotes infection, and infection lowers the fitness of the fish. For wild fish, lowered fitness means more difficulty finding food and escaping predators, causing higher death rates.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Cited Journal Article
>>>Sea-Cage Aquaculture, Sea Lice, and Declines of Wild Fish. Conservation Biology. 2008 Dec 16. [ePub ahead of print].

Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated
USGS National Wildlife Health Center
16 Dec 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 Dec 15, 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 credit: National Geographic - news.nationalgeographic.com