Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES

Severe Texas Drought Threatens Coastal Wildlife
Wall Street Journal - online.wsj.com
21 Apr 2009
A Compoy
Photo credit: Associated Press
Area: Texas, United States

A severe drought gripping Texas is causing unusually salty conditions along the Gulf Coast, upsetting the region's ecological balance and threatening coastal wildlife including oysters, crabs and whooping cranes, the most endangered crane species.

The drought is one of the driest on record for Texas and is currently the worst in the U.S., which has seen persistent dry weather across several Western states, Florida and even Hawaii, according to academic and government monitors. The scarcity of rain has reduced fresh-water flow from rivers and streams into coastal marshes, estuaries and bays that normally dilute the salt content of water from the Gulf of Mexico.

This spring, the only migrating whooping-crane flock that exists in the wild lost 23 of its 270 members to hunger and disease brought on by the dry weather, said Tom Stehn, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service whooping-crane coordinator.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Chromium: another threat to whale health?
Environmental Health News - www.environmentalhealthnews.org
22 Apr 2009
K Kidd

Endangered sperm whales are highly polluted with the metal chromium, a known human carcinogen.

Researchers sampling skin from sperm whales around the world found the animals have the highest levels of the metal chromium in their bodies of any marine mammal tested to date. The levels in the skin of the whales are similar to those found in lung tissues of humans with chromium-induced lung cancer and may be an additional health threat to the already endangered species.

Little is known about chromium in the world's ocean despite its link to human cancers.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Cited Journal Article
>>>A global assessment of chromium pollution using sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) as an indicator species. Chemosphere. 2009 Mar 25. Epub ahead of print.

Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated
USGS National Wildlife Health Center
23 Apr 2009
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 Apr 20, 2009 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

WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo credit: Associated Press - www.ap.org