Monthly Archives: April 2011

White nose syndrome in Kentucky

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Credit: KDFWR

A little brown bat in Trigg County, Kentucky had white nose syndrome. The Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS) in Athens, Georgia confirmed the diagnosis. The bat was found in a privately owned cave in southwest Kentucky, about 30 miles southeast of Paducah, the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources reports.

No other infected sites were found in a search of caves within a 16 mile radius of the cave. However, 60 “highly suspect” little brown and tri-colored bats were euthanized. Killing the bats, which were not expected to survive, were among the measures the state took to prevent the spread of white nose syndrome beyond this cave, which is a haven for about 2,000 hibernating bats.

“This is likely the most significant disease threat to wildlife Kentucky has ever seen”, said Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Commissioner, Dr. Jonathan Gassett in a press release. “It would be professionally irresponsible to take no action to stop or slow this disease.”

In 2009 Kentucky created a white nose syndrome response plan that included actions to take both before and after the syndrome arrived in the state. Indeed, what makes the Kentucky case unusual is that the state is taking steps to slow or stop the disease and is telling the public about them. We’ll stay tuned to see what happens.

For more information, read the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Resources press release. Or read the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service press release, which appears to be identical. Or, read this report from the Louisville Courier-Journal. A few other local news outlets also have the story.

Do birds spread Lyme disease?

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Birds may help Lyme disease spread into new areas, says a paper in a recent issue of Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment. The researchers, from the Yale School of Public Health, studied the literature and found that out of 71 bird species, 58.6 percent were capable of infecting a black-legged tick with the Lyme disease-causing bacterium.

That means that Lyme disease can move quickly, at the speed a bird can fly, throughout the region where black-legged ticks are found. For Lyme disease the focus is typically on the ticks’ small-rodent or white-tail deer hosts, and while those species get around, the idea of a bird host means Lyme disease has the potential to spread rapidly.

Read the Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment article here.

Similar research was being done on Cape Code (Massachusetts) a few years ago, with the focus on songbirds carrying black-legged ticks, particularly larval ticks. Read the Wicked Local story here.

Photo: Courtesy of the Centers for Disease Control.Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme disease, because it’s not every day that I get to post a picture of a spirochete.

Iowa eagle cam goes viral

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Not Iowans, but Alaskan eaglets

The live video feed from the bald eagle nest at the Decorah Fish Hatchery in Iowa has received 11 million hits, and at times has 100,000 viewers. It’s not the eagles, but the number of hits that is the subject of news stories from National Public Radio, the Associated Press and Agence France-Presse (via Yahoo! News). (I had to link to a cached copy of the AP story because it disappeared off the internet.)

The video cam is sponsored by the Raptor Resource Project, a non-profit organization that creates, improves and maintains raptor nests in the Midwest, with the intent of boosting raptor populations. In the AP story, Raptor Resource Project executive director Bob Anderson says that a technology upgrade, funded by the Upper Iowa Audubon Society, may have boosted the site’s hits. This year the site has a better hosting platform and better video quality.

See the feed for yourself, at the Raptor Resource Project Web site (which was a little slow at the time this was posted) or excerpts on its YouTube channel.

It may be time to take advantage of the buzz by promoting your department’s own nest cams. Keep in mind, though, that the video quality on the Decorah eagle cam is the best that I’ve seen in a nest cam, so this news may mean that everyone else will need to upgrade to keep the public’s interest.

Photo: These bald eaglets in Alaska are a little older than the Iowa eagle nestlings were at the time of posting.
Photo credit: US Fish & Wildlife Service

Artery worm prevalent in Wyoming moose

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Forty-two percent of the moose in Wyoming are infected with carotid artery worm, known as “sore head” in sheep, and as Elaeophora schneideri scientifically. When the worm, actually a nematode, was found in the Wyoming moose that also had the state’s first case of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in a moose, state biologists investigated further.

They tested 287 moose that were either killed by hunters or found dead, and found 42 percent of them were infected with carotid artery worm. In some parts of the state, the rate is as high as 50 percent.

Carotid artery worm was first found in mule deer and in domestic sheep in New Mexico. It does not seem to create any symptoms in the mule deer. The worm is transmitted from animal to animal by horseflies (tabanid flies). The symptoms in moose and elk include the animal’s nose and ears rotting away, and deformed antlers. The nematode can kill the moose before these symptoms occur. Carotid artery worm infections have been mistaken for CWD.

Carotid artery worm has been found in wild animals in 18 states in the South, Midwest, and West. A similar nematodes infect animals in Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Wyoming has been experiencing a decline in moose numbers, but it’s not known what role the carotid artery worm infection rate is playing.

Piece together the story through this news article in the Jackson Hole News & Guide,  this species account for moose from the Wyoming Game & Fish Department (PDF), and this sample abstract from an upcoming moose conference in Wyoming.

For background on the nematode, focusing on the infection of mule deer in Nebraska, try this open access article from The Journal of Wildlife Diseases.

Are you missing a mountain lion?

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Chesterfield, MO

Are you missing a mountain lion? Missouri has it. Sort of.

There have been six confirmed mountain lion sightings in Missouri since November. One of the mountain lions, photographed on a trail camera in December, appears to be wearing a radio collar with a VHF antenna. While that suggests the mountain lion’s participation in a tracking study, Missouri Department of Conservation resource scientist Jeff Beringer has not been able to find the researcher who collared it.

“I have made a lot of calls to other states trying to identify that animal, but so far my only lead is a missing, collared, sub-adult male from Utah. That would be one heck of a move – but not impossible,” said Beringer in a recent press release.

Two of the other Missouri mountain lions were shot by hunters. Their DNA has been tested, and shows that they are from either the Black Hills of South Dakota or from northwestern Nebraska, which are the two closest wild populations of mountain lions to Missouri. There was no evidence that the animals had been held in captivity. Those mountain lions were young and male, which is consistent with the department’s theory that these animals are traveling into Missouri from their home areas. Young male mountain lions are known to travel long distances in search of their own territory.

Linn County, MO

Much more information is available from the Missouri Department of Conservation. It includes the press release with information about the DNA results (in the middle of the page, after the DNA results from a Great Lakes wolf found in the state).And background information on mountain lion sightings in the state, including a map.

Photos: Courtesy Missouri Department of Conservation. The Linn County animal is the one with the radio collar. Go to the original photo accompanying the press release for a closer view.

Volunteers guard lake sturgeon

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Let’s face it, most fish and wildlife volunteers pull weeds or help stock fish. That’s why it’s always fun to read about unique volunteer opportunities. In Wisconsin, one of those opportunities is to serve as a Sturgeon Guard for spawning lake sturgeon in the Wolf River and its tributaries, the Embarrass and Little Wolf Rivers. The volunteers serve 12-hour shifts with a partner, and get a front row seat for the sturgeon spawning spectacle, which features females five- to seven-feet long, and their many male suitors cavorting in shallow water.

The program has eliminated sturgeon poaching in the area, and, apparently, some volunteers are disappointed when their 12-hour shift is cancelled because it falls outside of the actual sturgeon spawning window. Shifts run from April 15 to May 5.

Read more on the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website here. A direct link to the Sturgeon Guard program is here. Or read this article on the guard from a 2006 issue of Wisconsin Natural Resources Magazine.

Photo: Lake sturgeon, Eric Engbretson, US Fish & Wildlife Service