Wildlife Disease News Digest

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Bat-Killing Disease Spreads to More States
NPR - All Things Considered - www.npr.org
B Mann
11 Mar 2009
Area: United States

A mysterious ailment that is decimating bat colonies in the Northeast has spread more quickly than scientists once believed. "White-nose syndrome," first discovered in 2007, has been confirmed for the first time in New Hampshire and West Virginia. And scientists are investigating suspected sites in Virginia. Susi von Oettingen, a biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says the disease was confirmed last month in West Virginia, home to some of country's rarest and most diverse bat populations.

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>>>Caring for White-Nose Syndrome Bats
(Science Friday broadcast Friday, March 6th, 2009)

Lead poisoning plagues trumpeters
Hudson Star-Observer - www.hudsonstarobserver.com
12 Mar 2009
M Ontl
Area: Hudson, Wisconsin

Barry Wallace, known by many as the swan man, was reunited with an old friend on Thursday, a 14-year-old male trumpeter swan. The bird was a cygnet of the very first pair of trumpeter swans to nest naturally in Wisconsin in over 100 years. Wallace, who has been monitoring the Hudson trumpeter swan population since 1987, also keeps records of the collared birds and their cygnets along with watching for signs of disease and death. He knows the bird well. Born in 1995, he was the only cygnet of his parents to survive that year.

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Bovine Tuberculosis cases up slightly in infection area
Mlive - Flint Journal - www.mlive.com
E Shaw
11 Mar 2009
Area: Michigan, United States

Bovine tuberculosis in on a slight rise within the core infection area in the northeastern Lower Peninsula. A report to the Natural Resources Commission last week showed that the incidence of deer testing positive for TB rose from 1.4 percent to 1.8 percent in 2007 for deer taken in Deer Management Unit 452. The DMU includes Montmorency, Alpena, Oscoda and Alcona counties. Since first detected in an Alpena deer in 1975, bovine TB has been confirmed in more than 600 wild deer, most within that four-county area. A doe shot in Bennington Township in Shiawassee County in December 2007 was the farthest south the disease has been detected in Michigan's wild deer herd.

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Roadkill GPS Navigation System to Protect Animals
National Geographic News - news.nationalgeographic.com
11 Mar 2009
D Hansford
Area: Tasmania, Australia

Satellites can now warn Australian drivers to slow down in roadkill-prone areas, in a bid to stem the deaths of some 300,000 wild animals on the island of Tasmania each year. Researchers Alistair Hobday and Melinda Minstrell spent three years and covered 9,320 miles (15,000 kilometers) recording and mapping roadkill carcasses before uploading their data into a GPS (global positioning system) navigation program. "It's a technology that has been used to collect data, understand a problem, and then deliver a potential solution," said Hobday, an ecologist with Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). Just as motorists can program their in-car GPS navigation devices to automatically watch for rest areas or cafes, they can now be alerted when they approach "roadkill hot spots." (See roadkilltas.com for hot spot maps.)

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OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED STORIES
Photo credit: Elson Aca/World Wide Fund for Nature-Philippines via AP