A potentially devastating virus has been discovered for the first time in Pacific salmon stocks of British Columbia. The disease, infectious salmon anemia (ISA), has devastated Atlantic salmon and salmon farms in Chile, but how the virus will effect Pacific salmon is unknown. The fear is that it could be devastating all along the west [...]
Continue Reading →Release of 32 bighorn underway-
This release by the Nevada Department of Wildlife, Nevada Bighorns Unlimited and private individuals has taken 20 years to be accomplished. The stock for the release came from Nevada to the south around Stonewall Mountain near Tonapah. They are desert, not Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep. Bighorn are now back in [...]
Continue Reading →The state of Montana is considering expanding the area around Yellowstone where livestock must be vaccinated and tested for the livestock disease brucellosis after several elk tested positive for the disease in the Ruby Mountains.
Montana animal disease zone could expand – AP
What this may mean for wildlife in the area is still [...]
Continue Reading →Babesiosis, spread by deer ticks, could come to rival Lyme disease-
Ticks are an incredible reservoir of nasty diseases, and it seems like new ones are frequently discovered. Unfortunately, all too many are transmitted by the hard-to-see, small deer tick, which is much more common in the Eastern U.S. The larger, creepy-looking Rocky Mountain wood [...]
Continue Reading →Here is a real threat-
Although anti-wolf people try to scare us with the seldom caught Hydatid disease which is almost entirely spread, by dogs, fox, and coyotes, here is the latest on a very important threat from scat — domestic cat scat — toxoplasmosis gondii.
I have mentioned T. gondii a number of times. [...]
Continue Reading →Rot is caused by freeze-thaw cycles in unsanitary snow-
We just have to keep pointing out that persistant winter feeding of elk breeds disease. Now 23 elk have been put down for what is thought to be foot rot. No doubt more will die.
Foot rot suspected in elk deaths on refuge. By [...]
Continue Reading →Currently Chronic Wasting Disease does not infect humans, but . . .
Chronic wasting disease is spreading more and more widely. Our anti-conservation friends in the Department of Livestock and the various anti-wolf groups worry about brucellosis and dog tapeworms, but here is something that would be truly terrifying. Prions jumped from sheep probably to [...]
Continue Reading →More reporting about the bighorn/domestic sheep disease study
Other than the study itself, this is the first time that I’ve heard Dr. Srikmaran talk about last year’s study which confirms that domestic sheep diseases kill bighorn sheep.
“I am not that happy about this finding. Some people’s livelihood depends on domestic sheep,” [But the] [...]
Continue Reading →Another 2010-was-a-deadly-year-for-bighorn story-
The culprit is almost entirely pneumonia, and almost all of it, maybe all of it, comes from domestic sheep and goats. The Western Watersheds Project, and closely related groups like Advocates for the West, are just about the only organizations that are willing to step forward, tell the truth, and go after [...]
Continue Reading →Twenty-one more dead bighorn-
Pneumonia persists in Anaconda bighorns. Montana Standard.
Seems to me like Western Watersheds Project is about the only private organization doing anything to stop the spread of this disease that is taking such an awful toll.
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