TOP STORIES
BBC News - news.bbc.co.uk
18 Jun 2008
A Mynott
Area: Kenya Africa
Environmentalists in Kenya are worried that an insecticide is being used by farmers to kill lions and other predators. Carbofuran is a very powerful and toxic insecticide. Spread in the soil, it destroys bugs in the ground and is taken up by plants and kills insects which feed on the sap or foliage. It is so powerful and toxic that it has been banned in Europe.
In the United States it cannot be used in granular form, and the US Environmental Protection Agency is seeking a total ban. But in Kenya, carbofuran can be bought across the counter without restriction. According to world-famous naturalist Dr Richard Leakey, it is being bought not by farmers wanting to control bugs and insects, but mainly by herdsmen who use it to kill lions, leopards and other predators. Among the latest incidents two lions were poisoned and killed in the Maasai Mara game reserve after eating the carcass of a hippo that had ingested carbofuran.
Flame retardant linked to deaths of falcons could affect humans
The Gazette - www.canada.com/montrealgazette
18 Jun 2008
D Bird
After decades of being trapped and shot out of the skies as vermin and having their food poisoned by organochlorines like DDT, birds of prey in North America have made a remarkable comeback. Thanks to protective laws and the banning of harmful chemical pesticides, bald eagles and peregrine falcons have had their "endangered species" status removed both in the U.S. and in Canada. However, there could be dark clouds on the horizon for all raptorial birds, especially peregrines. Last week I received an email from Bud Anderson in Seattle, Wash., who witnessed the strange deaths of all three young, at around 2 weeks of age, in a peregrine nest on a building in that city.
Daniel Varland, another colleague of mine in Washington, reported that two of four peregrine nestlings suddenly died for no obvious reason in a cliff nest. In a third case, Bob Walters of the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, discovered three peregrine nestlings dying mysteriously in a nest on a building in Salt Lake City, Utah. Unseasonable weather, such as hot temperatures or severe rainfall of the kind that led to fatal hypothermia and possible drowning of the three young on a Winnipeg skyscraper in late May, have been ruled out. Also, it is unlikely, but not impossible, that the nestlings succumbed to a pigeon-transmitted parasitic disease called frounce or trichomoniasis, if only because the adults should have been affected similarly.
Sea Lion Seizures May Result From Toxic AlgaeNational Geographic News - news.nationalgeographic.com
17 Jun 2008
A Minard
With algal blooms on the rise in their habitat, sea lions in California are developing seizures and abnormal behavior, a new study of lab rodents shows. The symptoms can result from low-dose fetal exposure to domoic acid, a naturally produced neurotoxin in algae that becomes concentrated in the sea lions' food supply, researchers say. A new study follows an analysis earlier this year revealing that the symptoms comprise a new sea lion disease. Domoic acid concentrations rise at times due to natural, climactic factors, the authors point out.
But other human-made chemicals may be making the sea lions more susceptible. "This is probably just the beginning to understand how not just a single chemical, but a complex mix of chemicals we start life with can leave us vulnerable to disease later in life," said study co-author John Ramsdell, a physiologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). He believes the new study, published in the current issue of the online journal Marine Drugs, also has implications for human health. Toxin-producing algal blooms are natural, cyclical events.
>>>FULL ARTICLE
Cited Journal Article
>>>In Utero Domoic Acid Toxicity: A Fetal Basis to Adult Disease in the California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus). Mar. Drugs. 2008 Jun 6; 6(2): 262-290.
Cited Journal Article
>>>In Utero Domoic Acid Toxicity: A Fetal Basis to Adult Disease in the California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus). Mar. Drugs. 2008 Jun 6; 6(2): 262-290.
Fish-killing virus found in central Ohio reservoir
Chicago Tribune - www.chicagotribune.com (Source: Associated Press)
17 Jun 2008
Area: Clear Fork Reservoir, Richland County - Map It
and Morrow County - Map It , Ohio, USAThe Ohio Department of Natural Resources says it has found a fast-spreading fish virus for the first time in a waterway outside the Great Lakes basin. Viral hemorrhagic septicemia has caused large fish kills in four of the five Great Lakes and several inland lakes in the basin. The DNR says confirmation in muskellunge fish in the Clear Fork Reservoir in central Ohio marks the first isolation of the virus outside the basin. It was found during routine egg collection in April and confirmed through tests by federal agencies.
Dead geese pulled out of Fresno ponding basin
Fresno Bee - www.fresnobee.com
17 Jun 2008
P Lloyd
Area: Fresno, California USA - Map It
Cause of death will be determined by tests, but experts suspect avian botulism as cause.
The death of about 20 Canada geese at an east Fresno ponding basin is being investigated, but a state biologist suspects the geese died from avian botulism, which is not contagious to humans. Clu Cotter, wildlife biologist with the California Department of Fish and Game, collected one of the dead geese Tuesday at Dakota and Winery avenues and took it to the agency's laboratory. A necropsy, or animal autopsy, will be performed to determine what killed the geese. The testing could take about 48 hours, but Cotter said the geese appeared to have died from avian botulism.
"We're guessing what it is, but it's the right time of year," he said. "It's very common in the Valley in the summer." Cotter said West Nile virus is not a likely cause of death because geese are not one of the common species that carry the disease. The U.S. Geological Survey Web site says avian botulism paralyzes water birds that eat the toxin produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum. Botulism in humans, usually from improperly prepared food, is caused by other types of botulism toxins.
More CWD cases found
Edmonton Journal - www.canada.com/edmontonjournal
17 Jun 2008
E Beauchesne
Area: Alberta Canada - Map It
Twenty-four more cases of chronic wasting disease have been found in Alberta's wild deer, the Sustainable Resource Development of Alberta announced Tuesday. The results, from a 2007-2008 testing program, bring the province's count of the disease up to 53 cases. CWD affects the central nervous system and causes infected animals to slowly waste away. Evidence suggests it does not affect humans. Darcy Whiteside, spokesperson for Sustainable Resource and Development, said the department has consulted with communities such as Provost, Oyen and Wainwright, where many of the diseased deer have been detected.
"The next step is really making hunters aware there are opportunities here," he said, referring to an ongoing hunting program the government implemented in 2005 when the first diseased deer was found 30 kilometers southeast of Oyen. The program aims to reduce deer populations and track the disease. "It's a contagious disease, so any animal we can take away from the population is a plus," he said, adding the province was seeing excessive growth in the number of wild deer even before CDW. But Whiteside said the new numbers are not huge.
>>>FULL ARTICLE
Related News
>>>Alberta to allow Sunday hunting to cull deer herd, control chronic wasting disease
Related News
>>>Alberta to allow Sunday hunting to cull deer herd, control chronic wasting disease
OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Image courtesy of www.nacse.org
Tests confirm disease in cows [brucellosis]
WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Exposure assessment of carcass disposal options in the event of a notifiable exotic animal disease: application to avian influenza virus
Environmental science & technology. 2008 May 1;42(9):3145-54. [online abstract only]
SJ Pollard et al.
The Wildlife Professional (published by Wildlife Society) – June 2008
Volume 2, Issue 2
Use of laboratory data to reduce the time taken to detect new diseases: VIDA to FarmFile
Veterinary Record. 2008; 162: 771-776 [online abstract only]
JC Gibbens et al.
Avian influenza in Oxfordshire: virus confirmed as H7N7
Veterinary Record. 2008; 162: 766 [no online abstract available]
1 comment:
I wish that you would cover the Furadan issue more completely. The chemical is not only used in Kenya to kill carnivores. Lions and Hyaenas are taking the same sort of hit in Uganda - something my students and I have witnessed and I have written about in my recent book "The Trouble WIth Lions".
A recent report stated that it was even being used in one national park there in a preemptive way. Herders have apparently killed a calf by dosing it with Furadan and then left it our for carnivores, with terrible results for the target species. It is not just the mammals that suffer. Luke Hunter of the Wildlife Conservation Society has seen vultures affected, as have members of the Department of WIldlife and Animal Resource Management at Makerere University's Veterinary School. In 2007 there were hundreds of vultures in Queen Elizabeth National Park. On our 2-week working trip in February 2008 we saw only one. Furadan is cheap, readily available, and highly toxic. We cannot be certain that they died from Furadan poisoning, but it is highly likely, given the other things that are going on in the park. The stuff needs to be taken off the market, or at least properly controlled. Right now it can be purchased, without restriction, from many village outlets.
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