Wild Bird Smugglers, H5n1 Moves Toward U.S., and California's Ailing Sea Otters.

Wild Bird Smugglers Pose Avian-Flu Threat
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism
2006 April 03
Prime Sarmiento

The usually frenzied Recto district in downtown Manila slows down on Sundays, as schools and most shops take a day off. At the Arranque market, however, Sunday is as busy as any other day of the week.

Home to numerous pet shops, Arranque is astir seven days a week as buyers and sellers haggle amid cages containing yelping puppies, hamsters running inside their plastic play wheels, and parrots cloaked in a rainbow of feathers that seem as soft as felt.

This writer and an elderly companion were there one recent Sunday, ostensibly looking for a pet bird. After inspecting several pairs of cockatiels, this writer’s companion announced she was bored with the “ordinary” birds and expressed interest in cockatoos imported from Indonesia.

She told the seller she had heard these cockatoos were prettier and had brighter colored feathers, and indicated she was willing to pay a hefty amount for one. This was untrue, but the “show” was intended as a test. Sure enough, just a few minutes later, a middle-aged man appeared and said he had a contact who could deliver such a bird for a cool P20,000.

This is the kind of story that frustrates Mundita Lim, assistant director at the Protected Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB), the agency mandated to protect wildlife resources. In recent years, the PAWB has intensified its efforts in part because some of the smuggled birds, such as the salmon-crested cockatoos and chattering lories, are endangered varieties.

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H5n1 Moves Toward U.S.: Wild birds Mingle at 'Stopover Points'
TimesDispatch.com
2006 April 2
A.J. HOSTETLER

Surveillance for infected fowl to include areas such as bay, mid-Atlantic coast

For ornithologist Dan Cristol, "migration seems to be the key" to avian flu's arrival on U.S. shores and in the skies. As migratory birds fly north this month to breeding grounds in Alaska and northeastern Canada, their return by fall could bring avian flu to the East Coast. That could threaten residential wild birds, the $29 billion U.S. poultry industry and, potentially, human health.

Federal wildlife and public-health officials have created sampling protocols to spot infected birds migrating to Alaska from Asia beginning this month.

The federal surveillance already under way expanded as experts reached a growing consensus that migrating birds played a significant role in spreading avian flu from Asia to Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

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Bill Hopes to Help California's Ailing Sea Otters
Sacramento Bee Capital Bureau
2006 April 2
John Hill

SACRAMENTO, Calif.: -- Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, was visiting the Monterey Bay Aquarium last summer when he and his family learned that the threatened California sea otter population is not thriving, despite measures to protect it.

His 5-year-old son, Will, started to cry.

"Dad, you've got to do something about the sea otters," Jones recalls his son saying. "They're dying here."

Jones made inquiries at the aquarium and eventually talked to one of the sea otter experts.

What he learned led him to join with Assemblyman John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, to introduce a bill that would take several steps to do something to bring back California's sea otter population.

It once numbered about 15,000, but hunting in the 1700s brought sea otters to the brink of extinction. Now, about 2,500 otters live along the California coast. But an unusual number of adults in their prime breeding years have been dying, said D'Anne Albers, executive director of the non-profit Friends of the Sea Otter in Pacific Grove.

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