>From the New York Times website:

Dying Geese Puzzle Biologists

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CEANVILLE, N.J. -- Hundreds of Atlantic brant geese began turning up
dead in the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge last November, and
not all died quietly. Some fell from the sky in mid-flight, stricken by a
mysterious ailment whose origin continues to stump wildlife biologists and
disease experts alike. One motorist reported seeing a bird drop suddenly
from above, floundering in his path before crashing into a guardrail. The
carcasses of others were found in this sprawling wildlife refuge outside
Atlantic City and on the beaches of the neighboring island of Brigantine.
The die-off is puzzling: The dead geese appear perfectly healthy
otherwise, with plenty of body fat and no signs of trauma. Laboratory
examinations show no evidence of West Nile virus, avian cholera, pesticide
poisoning or any other common killer of waterfowl.

Strangest of all, the brant seem to be alone. No other bird, fish or
mammal in the coastal saltmarshes is being stricken by whatever it is that
killed about 700 brant in November. ``I've been studying waterfowl since I
got out of school 20 years ago,'' said Tracy Casselman, a U.S. Fish and
Wildlife official at Forsythe who has disposed of some of the dead birds.
``I've seen some small botulism die-offs but never a single species like
this. That's the biggest mystery.''

In the months since, the mystery has only deepened. Flocks of healthy
brant still swim and fly in the refuge, its saltmarshes and in nearby
Lakes Bay and Reeds Bay -- all apparently unaffected. But a second die-off
in mid-January left about 1,000 brant dead, most of them on Brigantine.
Necropsies and laboratory testing of tissue samples from the birds showed
heart hemorrhaging, spotted livers and fluid in the lungs. During the last
week of January, about 20 more dead brant were found in and around the
refuge.

Experts at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in
Madison, Wis., are trying to pinpoint the cause. And other agencies are
being called in to help. The National Marine Fisheries Service and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are being consulted in a
bid to determine whether algae blooms or biotoxins could be killing the
geese, which breed in the Canadian Arctic and spend winters in the
estuaries and back bays of New Jersey and other Eastern states.

Young and old, male and female are being stricken. But only in New Jersey;
wildlife biologists along the Atlantic coast in Maryland, Virginia and
elsewhere have seen no such deaths. ``We've talked to biologists from
Canada to South Carolina, and there's no problem outside this area,''
Casselman said.

Brant die-offs have occurred before, but not like this. In the 1980s,
there were instances in which up to 60 brant perished, but post-mortem
examinations identified pesticides as the cause; the birds ingested it
while grazing on golf courses. In the 1970s, a similar number starved to
death during one year in which the availability of eel grass -- one of
their principal sources of food -- was down. But this is different,
according to Kimberli Miller, a wildlife disease specialist at the
National Wildlife Health Center.

``An environmental cause? That's one of the things we're trying to figure
out. Is there something about that particular site? We're trying to look
at what similarities and differences there are between where the brant are
dying and where they're not. ``For disease to occur, you need three
things: an acceptable host, a disease agent and an environment suitable to
both of them. We're trying to sort out what the factors are that are
associated with this die-off, looking at air temperatures, water quality,
that type of thing. ``Typically, if it's something like a pollutant, you'd
see a variety of birds and mammals and fish affected, as opposed to one
little species,'' Miller said.

New Jersey's brant hunting season, which ran from Nov. 19 to Jan. 9, was
cut short because of the first die-off. Though it wasn't canceled
outright, the state warned hunters not to handle or eat the birds. The
human health risk posed by the dead birds isn't known. But officials are
warning people here not to handle -- or even let their dogs paw -- dead
brant.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has no plans to begin air
testing or water sampling yet, mainly because there appears to be no
public health threat, spokeswoman Sharon Southard said. ``We're working
with Fish and Wildlife to continue with the testing. They need to do
further testing before we make a decision on all of that,'' she said. The
puzzle is particularly frustrating to Miller, Casselman and others
involved in the investigation. While they don't want another die-off, they
say they might have to wait for one to progress any further. ``I sit there
and ponder -- on my way back and forth to work, in the shower in the
morning, wondering what this is,'' Casselman said. ``We've got the best
researchers in the nation working on this and now we have people overseas,
too. It just defies all the traditional logic.''

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company