Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES

Fleshing-eating disease is killing possums
Courier Mail - www.news.com.au/couriermail
18 Feb 2009
B Williams
Location: Australia - Map It
Photo courtesy of Courier Mail

A deadly flesh-eating disease has spread among possums, with the RSPCA getting an average of two infected animals brought in every week. RSPCA wildlife expert Janet Gamble said the disease was found in about one quarter of all possums brought into the refuge.

. . . "It's some sort of flesh-eating bacteria and it affects mostly brushtails and some ringtails although we haven't seen it in gliders."

Ms Gamble said the disease seemed to spread within the possum community much as chlamydia did with koalas.

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Saving Jaguars, Tigers Can Prevent Human Diseases?
National Geographic News- news.nationalgeographic.com
16 Feb 2009
K Than
Photo courtesy of National Geographic

Jaguars and other big cats can protect humans from the rise of future pandemics akin to HIV and bird flu.

That's the message freshly trained "doctor conservationists" will be taking into the field as part of a new collaboration between a wildlife-protection nonprofit and a teaching hospital.

...A decline in top-level predators such as the jaguar can lead to a boom in prey populations that encourages the spread of disease.

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Biologists fear bat deaths' broader effect
USA Today - www.usatoday.com
18 Feb 2009
L Bruno

First detected in New York in 2007, the cold-loving fungus has researchers stumped, says David Blehert, a microbiologist at the U.S. Geological Survey's Wildlife Health Center.

It isn't clear how the syndrome is spread, U.S. Fish and Wildlife says.

Alan Hicks, endangered-species biologist for the New York State Department of Conservation, says there is fear it could spread farther and even push some species to the brink of extinction within a few years.

Hicks cites New York's Hailes Cave as an example of how the plague can ravage a bat population. Once the winter home of an estimated 15,000 bats, the cave population dropped to about 7,400 because of white nose in 2007, the first year it was noticed, Hicks says. By last spring, only about 1,400 bats were found in the cave.

"There is no evidence yet of where this is going to stop," Hicks says.

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Turbines' impact on birds probed
BBC News - news.bbc.co.uk
16 Feb 2009

The impact small wind turbines placed on homes and business could have on birds and bats is to be studied by researchers at Stirling University.

The study will look at the number of the animals killed by micro-turbines, why they may fly towards the machines and possible effects on nesting.

Species which may be affected include those that take insects from the air, such as swifts and house martins. Those that nest in buildings, such as starlings, could also be in danger.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

West Nile virus has reached Austria, virologist says
Earth Times - www.earthtimes.org
13 Feb 2009
Location: Austria - Map It

The West Nile virus, which can cause meningitis in humans, has reached Austria, an virologist said Friday in Vienna. Birds carrying the virus were detected in Austria for the first time last year, Norbert Nowotny, a professor at the Vienna University of Veterinary Medicine, told Austrian press agency APA.

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Debate Rages Over Elk Feeding
New York Times - wwwnytimes.com
17 Feb 2009
K Johnson
Photo courtesy of New York Times

When the mighty elk herds of the West were facing the possibility of extinction from overhunting, settlement and neglect a century ago, people here stepped forward and began what has turned out to be a profound biological experiment.

They offered food to the straggling survivors. . . .

Now a new and tightening circle of challenges is closing in on the elk and the human system that has sustained them, forcing a debate over the science, emotion and economics of protecting these magnificent animals and the landscape they inhabit. At the center is a critical question: Did human kindness backfire, setting the elk up for disaster?

. . . Biological threats that could devastate the elk are also looming on the horizon, especially chronic wasting disease, or C.W.D., a neural disorder that spreads by mutated proteins, not unlike mad cow disease.

>>> FULL ARTICLE [includes slide show]

N.D. Senate rejects baiting bill

Volunteers feed elk, but state wants it stopped

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of Science Daily