TOP STORIES

Wildlife Toll Mounts as BP Oil Inundates Gulf Coast Marshes

. . . So far, workers have retrieved 584 animals -- 78 alive and 506 dead -- from the oil-stained coast. The count is lower than many biologists expected.

On Tuesday, while BP PLC was preparing yet another strategy to plug the gusher, biologists found just one bird, another brown pelican.

The day before -- Memorial Day -- five oiled seagulls were retrieved.

New York Times - www.nytimes.com (Source: Greenwire)
07 Jun 2010
A Reese

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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>>>Not Just Pelicans in Peril, But Pancake Batfish, Too

Environmental officials investigate dolphin deaths

Federal environmental regulators are investigating an unusually large number of bottlenose dolphin deaths along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico that occurred before the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

There were 62 dolphin deaths from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle in March and an additional 39 in April, said Erin Fougeres, a marine mammal biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Fisheries Service.

The average is 18 for March and 13 for April, she said.

USA Today - www.usatoday.com (Source: Florida Today)
06 Jun 2010
J Schweers
Photo credit: Tony Winton, AP

Location: USA, Alabama - Map It , Florida - Map It , Louisiana - Map It , and Mississippi - Map It

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U.S. Fish and Wildlife: columnaris disease caused Stonewall Jackson fish kill

Test results from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have identified the cause of a fish kill at a Lewis County lake.

DNR biologist Kevin Yokum says that tests conducted by the US Fish and Wildlife Service have identified the cause of the fish kill as columnaris disease.

It typically affects one species during an outbreak. In this case, it was crappie.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting - www.wvpubcast.org
04 Jun 2010
B Adducchio
Location: Lewis County, West Virginia, USA - Map It

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Honeybee collapse: Stung from behind

. . . It's a truly cautionary tale. Instead of a crisis that impacts humanity directly, such as a tidal wave or a pandemic, this one hits us as collateral damage through our ecological partners.

As such, it's tempting to use this crisis as an object lesson: we mess up the environment, pollinators suffer, harvests fail—and in the end, the cascade triggered by humanity rolls back on us in the form of hunger.

Perhaps this circular justice was too poetic to resist; perhaps stories from beekeepers such as Olson were a little too compelling — because in all the excitement, few researchers stopped to question whether the bee crisis was a genuine global trend.

Guardian News - www.guardian.co.uk (Source: Conservation Magazine)
07 Jun 2010
N Johnson
Photo credit: Haraz Ghanbari/AP

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated

USGS and a network of partners across the country work on documenting wildlife mortality events in order to provide timely and accurate information on locations, species and causes of death. This information was updated on Jun 04, 2010 on the USGS National Wildlife Health Center web page, New and Ongoing Wildlife Mortality Events Nationwide. Quarterly Mortality Reports are also available from this page. These reports go back to 1995.

USGS National Wildlife Health Center
07 Jun 2010
Area: United States

>>>Updated Wildlife Mortality Event Table

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS

• Lake Erie fish deaths called natural event
  
• First bird in R.I. County this year tests positive for West Nile virus - Rock Island County, Illinois, USA - Map It
• Scientists study wind-farm risks to birds
• Pole-to-Pole Climate Research: Adaptation Lessons from Tiny Springtails
• Hundreds of Animals Under Threat On Starvation Island

Rabies

• Rabies alert expanded in Indian River County as 5th unprovoked animal attack on human reported - Indian River County, Florida, USA - Map It
• Raccoon tests positive for rabies in Lowellville - Lowellville, Mahoning County, Ohio, USA - Map It

It Ain't All Bad News
Photo credit: Butterfly Conservation/PA

• Large blue butterfly flying high again
• 2 abandoned baby pygmy elephants saved in Malaysia

Huh, That's Interesting!

• Crocodiles ride ocean currents for ocean travel
• New to Nature No 9: Sinotympana incomparabilis

WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Browse complete Digest publication library here.

Transboundary and Emerging Diseases - April 2010
Volume 57 Issue 1-2
SPECIAL ISSUE: ONE HEALTH, ONE MEDICINE: TACKLING THE CHALLENGE OF EMERGING DISEASES

Surveillance for West Nile Virus in Wild Birds from Northern Europe
Vector Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2010 Jun 2. [Epub ahead of print]
E Jourdain et al.

Spatial dynamics of bar-headed geese migration in the context of H5N1.

J R Soc Interface. 2010 May 14. [Epub ahead of print]
Bourouiba L, Wu J.

Chemically rich seaweeds poison corals when not controlled by herbivores
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2010 May 25;107(21):9683-8. Epub 2010 May 10.
DB Rasher and ME Hay

Prion diseases: A little prevention can prevent a catastrophe
USDA Agricultural Research Service. AOAC AM-1 p1. 2009.
CJ Silva

Evaluating seasonal bait delivery to badgers using rhodamine B
European Journal of Wildlife Research. 2010; [Epub ahead of print]
KL Palphramand et al.