TOP STORIES
USDA Wildlife Specialists Dust Prairie Dogs' Burrows to Combat Plague
Wildlife specialists with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) dusted portions of a 40,000 acre ranch in Texas during the last week of April to combat a suspected plague outbreak in prairie dog colonies. They spread insecticide in burrows to kill fleas that transmit the deadly plague to prairie dogs.
The work in the Texas South Plains took place in cooperation with the Texas Parks and Wildlife and the landowner. Wildlife specialists on all-terrain vehicles treated 50-acre plots on the ranch, where hundreds of prairie dogs are dying. While plague has not been confirmed in this population, the die-off of prairie dogs is consistent with the recurring outbreaks of plague found in West Texas. The team was scheduled to work for two days to dust individual burrows with deltamethrin (DeltaDust). Deltamethrin is a widely used insecticide in residential and other sites to eliminate and prevent such pests as fleas, bedbugs, ticks and other insect pests. Exposure to mammals is classified as safe.
Although many consider them pests, prairie dogs are important in the diet of the black-footed ferret, as well as some raptors and the swift fox. USDA’s wildlife services (WS) program conducted the work in Texas to protect human health and to maintain potential habitat for the endangered black-footed ferret. Establishing a population of the highly endangered ferret in the Texas Panhandle is possible if habitat can be maintained.
04 May 2011
UW Sea Grant funding Winnebago system research on VHS fish disease
Four years after the deadly fish disease viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS) was first diagnosed in Wisconsin, researchers are returning to the Lake Winnebago system, the site of that discovery, to learn if the virus is still a threat and to develop a faster, cheaper test to detect its presence as a management tool. The Wisconsin general fishing opener is Saturday, May 7 and while the test would not be available for this year's fishing season, it could be in use for future seasons.
"Our main goal is to develop an antibody test that lets us know whether the VHS virus was present in a fish population, and that won't require any fish to be killed," says Tony Goldberg, a University of Wisconsin-Madison veterinary school epidemiologist and one of the principal investigators. "That's especially important for valuable and large game fish like musky and walleye."
Goldberg says the researchers also want to learn whether the VHS virus is still active in fish in Lake Winnebago, and to understand when in a calendar year the virus poses the biggest threat to fish.
03 May 2011
Record wildlife die-offs reported in Northern Rockies
A record number of big-game animals perished this winter in parts of Montana, Idaho and Wyoming from a harsh season of unusually heavy snows and sustained cold in the Northern Rockies, state wildlife managers say.
"Elk, deer and moose -- those animals are having a pretty tough time," said Wyoming Game and Fish biologist Doug Brimeyer. Snow and frigid temperatures in pockets of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming arrived earlier and lingered longer than usual, extending the time that wildlife were forced to forage on low reserves for scarce food, leading more of them to starve.
Based on aerial surveys of big-game herds and signals from radio-collared animals, experts are documenting high mortality among offspring of mule deer, white-tailed deer and pronghorn antelope. This comes as big-game animals enter the last stretch of a period from mid-March through early May that is considered critical for survival.
01 May 2011
L Zuckerman
Saving the Seas: Bleaching Threatens Coral, But Phage Therapy Could Prevent "Ghostly" Reefs
In the past 20 years, nearly a third of the world’s coral has been destroyed. Around 90 percent of the reefs off the coasts of Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Kenya, the Maldives and the Seychelles are at risk. If ocean temperatures rise by another 7ºF in the next three decades, as is predicted, 95 percent of the Great Barrier Reef will disappear. The primary cause of the die-off is coral bleaching. As temperatures rise, marine bacteria flourish and attack the algae that live symbiotically within every individual coral polyp.The algae photosynthesize sunlight into energy (in the form of sugars) for their hosts and give coral its color. When the algae dies, what’s left is a ghostly white.
Some corals in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf have avoided this fate, although no one knows exactly why. Eugene Rosenberg, a microbiologist at Tel Aviv University, has proposed that the presence of a different form of bacteria is what has made the difference. “Coral has thousands of bacterial species living within it, just as humans do,” he says. “These bacteria can help coral adapt to environmental changes.”
03 May 2011
P Kvinta
Cute Frog Battling Chytridiomycosis Poses for a Sierra Close-Up
Vredenburg makes regular forays here to study yellow-legged frogs, which seem immune to the swarm, but their skin is actually under attack from another, much deadlier menace: chytridiomycosis, or chytrid, a fungus that has decimated frogs that were once as abundant as the mosquitoes.
For Vredenburg, a biology professor at San Francisco State University, getting here requires a 17-mile hike over three mountain passes in the High Sierra that reach nearly 12,000 feet. “These are the most pristine areas we have,” he says, “yet even here, frogs are disappearing. Now, when you look into these high-mountain lakes, you see no life, not even a tadpole.”
03 May 2011
K Bastone
OTHER WILDLIFE-RELATED HEALTH NEWS
- Sick dolphin put to sleep (third story down) [Bulacan, Phillipines - Map It]
- State working to understand turtle deaths
- Dead Bird Reporting Hotline Re-Activated to Track WNV
- Climate Change Spells Extinction for a Mountain Species, Research Shows
- Rotational Grazing in Native Pasturelands Benefits Wildlife
- Biodiversity: One in four U.S. birds imperiled
- Europe bids to 'halt' biodiversity loss
White-Nose Syndrome
- Lethal Bat Fungus not here - yet [Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA]
- Ozark Caverns Take Extra Steps to Ensure Safety [Ozark Caverns, Missouri, USA]
