TOP STORIES
More Information About the Seabird Ecological Assessment NETwork (SEANET)
For the Friday posting last week, we spotlighted the Seabird Ecological Assessment NETwork (SEANET). We have some additional information to share about this ongoing, citizen scientist volunteer project that assesses seabird mortality along the eastern seaboard of the United States. They have a blog that is regularly updated with news and announcements, as well as training resources for their volunteers. You can visit the blog here.
UC Davis leads attack on deadly new diseases
EurekAlert - www.eurekalert.org (Source: University of California - Davis
23 Oct 2009
In hopes of preventing the next global pandemic and a possible death toll into the millions, UC Davis today launches an unprecedented international effort to find and control diseases that move between wildlife and people.
The global early warning system, named PREDICT, will be developed with funding of up to $75 million over five years and is one of five new initiatives of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) known in combination as the Emerging Pandemic Threats Program.
Building on its long-standing programs in disease surveillance and response, USAID is developing these initiatives to help prepare the world for infectious diseases like H1N1 flu, avian flu, SARS and Ebola.
>>>FULL ARTICLE
Related News
>>>Wildlife Conservation Society to expand health surveillance through PREDICT
Related News
>>>Wildlife Conservation Society to expand health surveillance through PREDICT
Secrets of frog killer laid bare BBC News - news.bbc.co.uk
22 Oct 2009
R Black
Scientists have unravelled the mechanism by which the fungal disease chytridiomycosis kills its victims.
The fungus is steadily spreading through populations of frogs and other amphibians worldwide, and has sent some species extinct in just a few years.
Researchers now report in the journal Science that the fungus kills by changing the animals' electrolyte balance, resulting in cardiac arrest.
Regional: Seabirds Threatened by Algal Bloom Being Transported to Bay Area
CBS News 5 - cbs5.com
26 Oct 2009
Area: Oregon, USA - Map It
and Washington, USA - Map It Specialists are racing to transport red-throated loons and other sensitive migratory birds that are threatened by an unusual algal bloom off the Oregon Coast to a rescue facility in the San Francisco Bay.
Hundreds of seabirds began washing up on Oregon and Washington beaches Tuesday following a rapid increase in the amount of algae, according to officials at the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Fairfield.
Since then, the Wildlife Center of the North Coast in Astoria, Ore., has been inundated with birds covered in a slimy foam caused by a single-cell algae that multiplies in warmer weather.
Endangered Ferrets Surviving Plague
Wyoming AP News - cbs4denver.com
25 Oct 2009
C Brokaw
One of the nation's largest colonies of endangered black-footed ferrets is surviving despite the disease that has hit their home in a vast stretch of prairie dog towns south of Badlands National Park, according to federal wildlife officials.
Since deadly sylvatic plague was discovered in the Conata Basin in May 2008, the disease has wiped out black-tailed prairie dogs, the ferrets' main prey, in about half their former range, said Randy Griebel, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Forest Service, which manages the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands in southwestern South Dakota.
Oil spill 'massive' risk to Australian animalsYahoo News - news.yahoo.com (Source: AFP)
23 Oct 2009
Photo credit: AFP
Area: Timor Sea, Western Australia, Australia - Map It
A massive oil and gas leak off Australia's northwest coast was killing seabirds and threatening thousands of marine animals, conservationists warned Friday.
Oil company PTTEP Australasia is preparing to make a fourth attempt at plugging the leaking Montara wellhead, which has been spewing oil, gas and condensate into the Timor Sea since August 21.
The spill is reportedly Australia's worst since offshore drilling began more than 40 years ago.
TOP READ LINKS FROM LAST WEEK
NEWS
- Canada: call for elk cull because of increasing bovine TB
- 9 Weirdest-Looking Animals You Didn't Know Existed [photo gallery]
- Plan to help keep bats from dying out [white-nosed syndrome]
- The Spread of New Diseases: The Climate Connection
- DNR: Disease won't trigger ban on scents [chronic wasting disease]
- Feeding birds this winter? Don't love them to death
- 2nd International Berlin Bat Meeting: Bat Biology and Infectious Diseases [conference announcement]
- Killer Algae: Key Player In Mass Extinctions
- Wind Energy: A Scare for Bats and Birds
- Catching a killer one spore at a time [chytrid fungus]
- Toxoplasma gondii and Neospora caninum in sparrows (Passer domesticus) in the Northeast of Brazil
- Veterinary aspects of ecological monitoring: the natural history of emerging infectious diseases of humans, domestic animals and wildlife
- Qualitative risk assessment of the role of the feral wild boar (Sus scrofa) in the likelihood of incursion and the impacts on effective disease control of selected exotic diseases in England
- Chronic wasting disease (CWD) susceptibility of several North American rodents that are sympatric with cervid CWD epidemics
- Oseltamivir Carboxylate – the Active Metabolite of Oseltamivir Phosphate (Tamiflu), Detected in Sewage Discharge and River Water in Japan
OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo credit: BBC News
The week in wildlife- Genes May Determine Susceptibility To H5N1 Avian Influenza A Virus Infection
- Techs man sites to check for wasting disease [Montana]
- Mosquito, imported - USA: (SD)
- Invasive Species in the Great Lakes: What's Being Done?
- 'Freezer plan' bid to save coral
- Rabies confirmed in Grant County fox - Grant County, New Mexico, USA - Map It
- Dead whale found in Toco - Suicide Beach, Toco, Trinidad and Tobago - Map It
- Stranded dolphin dies on NJ beach - Sea Bright, Monmouth County, New Jersey, USA - Map It
