TOP STORIES
Field Reports: Oregon wolf dies from parvovirus
The first case of parvovirus in Oregon wolves has been documented by the Oregon State University Veterinary Diagnostic Lab. The wolf known as OR19, found dead by Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists on May 19, died of complications of canine parvovirus, according to the lab’s preliminary report.
The Spokeman-Review
02 Jun 2013
Location: Oregon, USA - Map It 
Tracking vultures for pollution sources
...three bird researchers spent their mornings recently huddled in a fly-ridden blind overlooking three piles of rotting calf carcasses because they think vultures are nature's sentinels.
They rigged the carcasses with fishing-line nooses to trap one of the continent's most widespread scavengers and learn from it what ails the land. They hope that by tracking the movements of a bird that is common and has an "ironclad stomach" for pollutants, they can zero in on sources of lead and pesticides that have nearly wiped out more sensitive birds.
And by mapping their flights, they can prescribe ways to save ecosystems that stretch across hemispheres — while the birds are plentiful. "We're not chasing the ambulances," said Keith Bildstein, conservation-science director for Hawk Mountain, a Pennsylvania raptor center that is leading the study. "We're trying to prevent the accidents." When vulture populations crash, it's an ugly sight.
News Herald
01 Jun 2013
B Loomis
Deadly combination caused mass marine deaths, not desal plant, says official report
A deadly combination of high water temperatures, algal blooms and a virus caused the mass fish and dolphin deaths over the past three months, according to an official report that clears the desalination plant of any blameA tiny, spiny diatom was among the culprits for the fish kills, lodging barbs in fish gills leading to inflammation and death.
A multi-agency investigation which included pathology tests found some weaker fish became susceptible to lethal bacterial infection due to high water temperature and harmful algae.
It also concluded that dolphin Morbillivirus was almost certainly the underlying cause of the death of the 34 mostly young dolphins discovered since March 1, causing an immune suppression which allowed fungal and parasite infections to thrive. Post-mortems conducted on five of the dolphins so far confirmed the presence of the disease.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries Gail Gago said no single water quality or pollution point source was found responsible for the geographically extensive series of events.
Australian News
01 Jun 2013
The Rise of Ranavirus: An Emerging Pathogen Threatens Ecotothermic Vertebrates
Ranaviruses have been called “cold-blooded killers” (Chinchar 2002) for good reason — they are capable of causing illness and death in three ectothermic vertebrate classes (amphibians, reptiles, and fish). Experiments have also demonstrated that the virus can be passed among these groups (called interclass transmission; Bandin and Dopazo 2011), likely facilitating its persistence in aquatic systems. Ranaviruses were discovered in the 1960s (Granoff et al. 1965), yet their role in widespread die-offs of ectothermic vertebrates wasn’t realized until the 1990s (Gray et al. 2009). Researchers are now racing to determine what makes ranaviruses so virulent and capable of infecting so many hosts (Lesbarrères et al. 2012).
We’ve been in that race for eight years after detecting ranavirus in frog communities in Tennessee farm ponds. We found that green frog (Lithobates clamitans) tadpoles in ponds with cattle access were 4.7 times more likely to be infected with ranavirus than those in ponds with no cattle (Gray et al. 2007). Although many factors may have contributed to this trend, we suspect that poor water quality (a stressor) and minimal vegetation (which increases contact rates among individuals) in cattle-access ponds played a role.
The Wildlife Society News
17 Mar 2013
MJ Gray and DL Miller
OTHER WILDLIFE HEATH RELATED NEWS
- Atlantic puffin population is in danger, scientists warn
- Wildlife Center seeing more starving animals [New Mexico, USA]
- Sea lion strandings pass 1,500 mark
- Bovine TB: Parliament backs plans for trial badger culls [United Kingdom]
- Two dead birds test positive for West Nile virus [View cases reported in San Mateo Co., California, USA - Map It ]
- Moose multiply in Colo. as herds decline elsewhere [Colorado, USA]
- Nearly half of the 49 newborn Minnesota moose fit with GPS collars just days ago have died [Minnesota, USA]
- Planning a new bat cave to call home [New York, USA]
- Bad news for bats: White-nose syndrome approaches Wisconsin's border [Wisconsin, USA]
- Bleak Predictions for Indiana myotis [newsletter article]
- Fungus threatens area bat population [Ohio, USA]
- People turn out to oppose subdivision near bat cave [Texas, USA]
- Endangered Coral Reefs Die as Ocean Temperatures Rise and Water Turns Acidic [PBS]
- Volunteer Divers Needed To Restore Coral Reefs
- Beneath the surface: Representative takes underwater tour of Kauai’s diseased coral reef [Kauai, Hawaii, USA]
- Fish disease appears to be fading [Irondequoit Bay, New York, USA]
- Low water levels put adult chinook at risk of disease [Oregon, USA]
- Hundreds of dead carp reported at Jamestown Dam [North Dakota, USA - Map It ]
- Possible Pandemic: Is MERS the New SARS?: Virus hunter Nathan Wolfe tells us about a deadly new virus [National Geographic News]
- Global Warming and its Catastrophic Effect on Human’s Health
- State to test more backyard chickens for deadly bird flu
- Rabid animals on the rise [New York, USA]
- WHO expert team, including Canadian, in Saudi investigating MERS outbreak
- Why Female Loggerhead Sea Turtles Always Return to Their Place of Birth [advantageous parasite resistance] [Cited journal article HERE]
- Mosquitoes temper severity of malaria [National Geographic News]
- Mutant Mosquitoes Lose Ability to Sniff Out Humans
- The Scoop On Bird Poop: Evolving Diversity of Microbial Life in Bird Guts
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