Wildlife Disease News Digest

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A "One Health" Approach to Influenza
USAHA - www.usaha.org (Source: DHS National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense)
25 Sep 2009

A task force of some of the world's leading influenza experts will meet in Washington, D.C. during early December to consider what we can learn from current efforts to address the H1N1 virus and how we can better utilize and develop science to prevent and manage influenza outbreaks.

The DHS National Center for Foreign Animal and Zoonotic Disease Defense and the NIH Western Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases are working together to convene this panel of experts drawn from the diverse backgrounds of public health, medicine, veterinary medicine, epidemiology, virology, and wildlife biology.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

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Reported Wildlife Mortality Events to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center Updated
USGS National Wildlife Health Center
28 Sep 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 Sep 24, 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

Southern bats now dying from fungus
The Journal - www.journal-news.net
27 Sep 2009
J Vincent

. . . White-nose syndrome was discovered by cavers in West Virginia this past summer in Pendleton County, Bennett said.

Shortly afterward, it was discovered in Bath County, Va., he said.

"So far it has been seen in more than one cave in Pendleton County. But in Virginia, I think it is now up to either six or seven counties. And it is all the counties geographically that are in line with Pendleton County into Virginia, then it made another jump into southern Virginia right near the Virginia-Tennessee border. This one had to have been due to a migration pattern, because the cave they found it in is not one that is highly visited by humans," Bennett said.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Scientists Find Scientists hunt for clues to elk loss
Rapid City Journal - www.rapidcityjournal.com
28 Sep 2009
K Woster
Area: Custer State Park, Custer County, South Dakota - Map It

The hunt is on in Custer State Park, both for trophy elk and for a disease that might be causing a 50 percent decline in elk-calf numbers.

The calf crop has dropped sharply in the park during the past two years, to an average of about 20 calves per hundred cow elk. A more typical level in the park is 40 to 45 elk calves per 100 cows.

. . . Along with the regular requirement that bagged elk must be checked in with Game, Fish & Parks officers, elk hunters in the park are also being given needles and vials to use to take blood samples immediately after they shoot an elk.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

HIV’s Ancestors May Have Plagued First Mammals
ScienceDaily - www.sciencedaily.com (Source: University of Oxford)
28 Sep 2009
Photo credit: iStockphoto/Nancy Craft

The retroviruses which gave rise to HIV have been battling it out with mammal immune systems since mammals first evolved around 100 million years ago – about 85 million years earlier than previously thought, scientists now believe.

The remains of an ancient HIV-like virus have been discovered in the genome of the two-toed sloth [Choloepus hoffmanni] by a team led by Oxford University scientists who publish a report of their research in this week’s Science.

'Finding the fossilised remains of such a virus in this sloth is an amazing stroke of luck,’ said Dr Aris Katzourakis from Oxford’s Department of Zoology and the Institute for Emergent Infections, James Martin 21st Century School.

>>>FULL ARTICLE

Cited Journal Article
>>>Macroevolution of Complex Retroviruses. Science. 2009 September 18; 325(5947): 1512.

OTHER WILDLIFE HEALTH RELATED NEWS
Photo credit: Brandon D. Cole/Corbis