Wildlife Disease News Digest

TOP STORIES

West Nile virus: new online reporting tool to help track dead birds [press release]
Washington State Dept of Health - www.doh.wa.gov
10 Jun 2009

Mosquito season is here, bringing increased risk of West Nile virus. The Department of Health has a new online dead bird reporting system to help track this disease.

This new tool (www.doh.wa.gov/wnv) makes it easier than ever for people to let health officials know when they find a dead bird. Testing mosquitoes and dead birds is one of the ways we track the virus in our state. Information provided online automatically goes to state and local health agencies. There are pictures of birds online so people can easily identify the bird they’ve found.

. . . The state Department of Health asks people to watch for dead birds and report them using this online system or contact their local health agency (www.doh.wa.gov/LHJMap/LHJMap.htm). Crows, ravens, jays, magpies, and hawks are particularly important to report because they often die from West Nile infection. Dead bird monitoring is encouraged from June through November.

>>> FULL PRESS RELEASE

More West Nile Virus News

>>> West Nile surveillnce could be cut

>>>Dead bird collection and mosquito trapping begin

>>> Mosquito, bird test positive for West Nile Virus [Kern County, California, USA - Map It

]

Did the Rat Island restoration effort kill 41 bald eagles?
60 Second Science - www.scientificamerican.com
12 Jun 2009
Photo courtesy of Scientific American
Location: Rat Island, Alaska, USA - Map It

Last year, one of the world’s most aggressive island restoration projects was launched to poison all the invasive rats on Alaska’s Rat Island, located in the western part of the Aleutian islands. But the extermination project may have taken an unexpected toll: a recent survey of the island recovered the corpses of 41 bald eagles and 186 glaucous-winged gulls – raising the possibility that the birds died after consuming poisoned rats.

>>> FULL ARTICLE

Sea otters wash ashore in Kachemak Bay
Homer Tribune - www.hometribune.com
10 Jun 2009
N Klouda
Location: Homer, Alaska, USA - Map It

Photo courtesy of Homer Tribune

Two dead sea otters reportedly washed ashore in Homer this weekend, one a female pup and the other not located before the tide carried it away. Kristin Worman, U.S. Fish and Wildlife unusual mortality event responder, said the baby otter – found below Glacier Boardwalk on the Homer Spit – had suffered no apparent injuries.

. . . Biologists studying otters in surveys found them “fat and happy,” fed on the Bay’s abundant sea life, such as crab, octopus and shellfish. The fact that even the Lower Cook Inlet tanner crab populations prove abundant enough to open a subsistence fishery in the Bay tells biologists like Gill that the ecosystem is a good one. (Biologists will announce later in June if there will be a 2009 tanner crab opening.)

Still, valvular endocarditis, a virus striking otters and responsible for a number of the deaths, remains a concern. The virus is an inflammation in the innermost layer of tissue that lines the heart valves. Septicemia, a bacteria found in the blood, is most likely the earliest stage of the process leading to the infection. Sub-adult males appear to be the heaviest hit by it.

>>> FULL ARTICLE

June Science Picks -- Leads, Feeds and Story Seeds
USGS Newsroom - www.usgs.gov/newsroom
10 Jun 2009