TOP STORIES
Deadly fish virus now found in all Great Lakes 
A deadly fish virus that was first discovered in the Northeast in 2005 has been found for the first time in fish from Lake Superior, report Cornell researchers.
That means that the virus has now been documented in all of the Great Lakes.
. . . While no significant fish mortality due to VHSV was observed in 2008 and 2009, "It is important to note that there are still fish harboring VHSV; essentially the infection proceeds even though no mortalities are being observed," said Bowser.
Cornell Chronicle Online - www.news.cornell.edu
27 January 2010
Photo courtesy of Cornell Chronicle
27 January 2010
Photo courtesy of Cornell Chronicle
California brown pelicans now stranded along the Oregon Coast are starving by the hundreds and begging for food instead of migrating south in what is seen as a rare and somewhat macabre phenomenon.
Dead birds in full mating plumage have washed ashore in Oregon, while hundreds of others are congregating in places such as the boat basins in Brookings, Bandon and Port Orford.
The normally skittish pelicans have been begging for food from people, walking up to cars for handouts and even landing on recreational boats to peck at crab-pot baits, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "That's a behavior we've never seen before in Oregon," says Roy Lowe, manager of the Oregon Coast National Wildlife Refuge Complex based in Newport. "They're in sad shape."
Mail Tribune - www.mailtribune.com
27 January 2010
M Freeman
Photo courtesy of Mail Tribune
Location: Oregon, USA - Map It
27 January 2010
M Freeman
Photo courtesy of Mail Tribune
Location: Oregon, USA - Map It
Pneumonia Confirmed In Lower Rock Creek Bighorn Sheep
Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks (FWP) announced today that a pneumonia outbreak is underway in another bighorn sheep population in west-central Montana.
The latest occurrence of the nearly always-fatal respiratory disease was confirmed in two young rams that FWP’s wildlife veterinarian and biologists collected Tuesday afternoon from the Lower Rock Creek population.
Other recent pneumonia outbreaks affected bighorn populations in the East Fork Bitterroot late last year and in the Bonner area earlier this month.
OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
The story that appeared in the Digest earlier this week, Salt Plains refuge personnel to scare off sandhill cranes with propane cannons, was a story from January 2009. Please excuse the confusion.
Photo credit: A Sheppard, C Sheppard/Chagos Conservation Trust
- Workers clean up Texas oil spill, and wildlife [Port Arthur, Texas, USA]
- Beached beaked whale dies in Florida [Brevard County, Florida, USA - Map It ]
- Officials fear another whooping crane die-off
- Arizona Intentionally Snared Last Jaguar, Inquiry Finds
- Wildlife of the Chagos islands [image gallery]
- Understanding human threats to the Earth's largest habitat -- the deep sea [includes video; cited journal article]
Poaching
It Ain't All Bad News
Huh, That's Interesting!
- Bat Echolocation: 3-D Imaging Differentiates How Various Bats Generate Biosonar Signals [cited journal article]
- In Bats and Whales, Convergence in Echolocation Ability Runs Deep [first cited article; second cited article]
- All things bright and beautiful: what photographer found in one cubic foot [cited article includes image gallery and video]
