Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES
Red tide bloom off Mustang Island
Dallas Morning News - www.dallasnews.com (Source: Associated Press)
28 October 2009

Location: Port Mansfield Channel, Willacy County, Texas, USA - Map It

State monitoring has confirmed a stretch of red tide bloom extending from southern Mustang Island into Mexico.

Details of a coastal flyover were reported by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

The agency said fish kills Tuesday were seen inside Mansfield Channel and Brazos-Santiago Pass, with the dead fish extending out to approximately 1 mile offshore.

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Dead 'butanding' found in Manila Bay

Inquirer - www.inquirer.net
28 Oct 2009
A Valmero
Photo credit: R Zamora/Inquirer

Location: Manila Bay, Philippines - Map It

A whale shark, locally called “butanding”, was found dead on Manila Bay by local fishermen on Wednesday morning, according to the local arm of conservationist group World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).

WWF Philippines information officer Gregg Yan said the possible causes for the butanding’s death include disease, gear entanglement, exposure to organic pollutants and ship strikes.

Measuring 15-feet long, the female whale shark bore a few scars, including small cuts on its tail possibly caused by a rope and strange injuries to both eyes, with the eyeballs missing when the carcass was found along the South Harbor at 1:30a.m., said Yan.

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Rescue center aids hundreds of at-risk birds
San Francisco Chronicle - www.sfgate.com
28 Oct 2009
H Lee
Photo credit: L Atkins/The Chronicle

Location: Oregon, USA - Map It

and Washington, USA - Map It

. . . Thousands of birds have died in the past week as a result of the phenomenon off the coast of Oregon and Washington.

About 150 injured birds found on beaches were taken by van from Portland to the International Bird Rescue Research Center in Fairfield, arriving Saturday night. On Monday, 305 more birds were put into crates and flown by a Coast Guard C-130 Hercules to McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento before being brought to the center.

Twelve birds have had to be euthanized, but the rest are recuperating, Jay Holcomb, the center's executive director, said Tuesday.

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Bergen bat count down 58%
The Record - www.northjersey.com
28 Oct 2009
J O'Neill

Location: Bergen County, New Jersey, USA - Map It

The bat population was down 58 percent in Bergen County this summer, according to new research that reinforces fears that many of the state's bats were wiped out last winter by a fungus linked to the deaths of a million bats in nine states.

The summer bat count showed population down an average of 30 percent at 40 summer roost sites in nine counties, mostly in North Jersey. Of the 23 sites that showed a noticeable decrease in bat population, some roosts were entirely empty, said MacKenzie Hall, a biologist with the Conserve Wildlife Foundation of New Jersey.

. . . But the count also found a dozen sites where the bat population remained stable, and five roosts showed population increases.

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