Wildlife Disease News Digest

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90 per cent of pandas in jeopardy after China earthquake
Times Online - www.timesonline.co.uk
14 Jun 2008
J Macartney
Area: China - Map It

Nearly all of China’s endangered pandas are in jeopardy after the earthquake last month devastated the remote mountain corner that is their last remaining habitat. Already boxed into these steep and thickly forested hillsides by the advance of Man, its numbers limited by a slow rate of reproduction and with its food supply threatened by the scarcity of its favourite arrow bamboo, the panda is now facing its most severe crisis in decades. Chinese officials, usually reluctant to reveal the real extent of a crisis, have announced that the last 1,590 pandas living in the wild face a very uncertain future after the earthquake. Yan Xun, an official at the State Forestry Administration, said: “Their living environment is completely destroyed. Massive landslides and large-scale damage to forests triggered by last month’s earthquake are threatening the existence of wild pandas.”

The fate of the pandas has been a cause of concern since the May 12 earthquake, which cut off access to large swaths of mountainous areas, including China’s largest panda breeding centre in Wolong. One giant panda from the reserve was buried this week after its body was found crushed under the walls of its pen. Another is missing. The other 51 are safe, including 14 cubs that were carried out of the reserve by keepers. The fate of the 1,400 pandas living in the quake-hit regions – about 88 per cent of the total – remains unknown and a source of growing anxiety. The tremor damaged 1.9 million hectares (4.7 million acres), 83 per cent of China’s total panda habitat.

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Mysterious disease casts uncertainty on Ind. bat comeback
Chicago Tribune - www.chicagotribune.com (Source: Associated Press)
15 Jun 2008
R Callahan
Area: United States

With a gloved hand, Lori Pruitt reaches into a crevice in the chilled depths of southern Indiana's Wyandotte Cave, grasping a mouse-sized bat that bares its small spiked teeth under her flashlight's beam. "He's just a tiny little guy but he's going to be totally perturbed by the time we're done with him," says Pruitt, an endangered species biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The brownish male, which flutters away as soon as it's released, is an endangered Indiana bat -- a species in the midst of a resurgence after decades in decline. But Pruitt fears that comeback -- and those of other bat species -- could be short-lived.

. . . "If something like white-nose syndrome happens to this cave, a large portion of the population would be affected -- just like that," said Pruitt, the Indiana bat coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service. Alan Hicks, a wildlife biologist with the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, worries about the ailment's eventual impact not just on the Indiana species but other rare or threatened bats such as the Virginia big-eared bat, of which only about 13,000 remain. "Don't think of this as confined in the Northeast. Think of it as starting in the Northeast," he said. For the Indiana bat, which was headed to extinction in 1967 when it was declared federally endangered, the ominous new threat comes just as it seems to have turned a page in its recovery.

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Dead dolphins: Navy admits use of anti-submarine sonar off Cornish coast
The Telegraph - www.telegraph.co.uk
15 Jun 2008
R Gray
Area: St. Mawes, England United Kingdom

A Navy helicopter was using controversial sonar equipment off the Cornish coast days before 26 dolphins died in a mass stranding. Officials at the Ministry of Defence admitted last night that the sonar "dipper", designed to hunt submarines, had been used by a Merlin helicopter on training exercise. Four days later, the dolphins beached in the shallow Fal and Percuil rivers 60 miles away near Falmouth. The mass stranding last Monday was the biggest in Britain for 30 years.

Conservation groups want a full investigation. Marine wildlife and underwater acoustics experts said loud pulses from the sonar may have scared or confused the common dolphins into Falmouth Bay, where they became disorientated. An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph discovered that the sonar was being used as part of an exercise involving the nuclear-powered submarine Torbay and a number of surface warships. The Merlin was equipped with a mid-frequency sonar dipper known as S2089, which is winched down into the sea to detect submarines beneath the surface.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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>>>Theories and rumours abound as scientists ponder mystery of mass dolphin deaths

Disease is found in perch
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel - www.jsonline.com
PA Smith
14 Jun 2008
Area: Wisconsin United States - Map It

The deadly fish disease viral hemorrhagic septicemia has been found in Lake Michigan yellow perch, heightening concerns about the plight of the popular native fish and the vulnerability of the Wisconsin sport fishery in general. "It's not good news, but it's not unexpected," said Randy Schumacher, regional fisheries supervisor in Milwaukee for the Department of Natural Resources. "The real priority now is keeping the virus from getting transferred to inland lakes." The finding comes a week after VHS was detected in round gobies found dead on beaches in South Milwaukee, the first such finding in southern Lake Michigan.

Another in a string of invasive species and diseases transferred into the region from Europe and Asia, VHS causes blood vessels to weaken and hemorrhage, often but not always killing the fish. It is not a threat to human health, according to the DNR. The disease was first discovered in the Great Lakes in 2005 and has caused large fish kills in New York waters, including thousands of spotted muskies in the St. Lawrence River and walleyes in Conesus Lake, Schumacher said. VHS was detected in Wisconsin waters last year, first in freshwater drum in Lake Winnebago and later in brown trout in Lake Michigan waters near Algoma.

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Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated
USGS National Wildlife Health Center
16 Jun 2008
Area: United States

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 June 13, 2008 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.

>>> Updated Wildlife Mortality Event Table

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo courtesy of National Geographic