Subject: Avian cholera, ducks - USA (CA) (fwd)
Date: Feb 3 11:51:07 2004
From: Devorah A. N. Bennu - nyneve at amnh.org



hello tweets,

i thought you all might find this interesting, although very
sad! i hope all is well in lovely seattle.

regards,

Devorah A. N. Bennu, PhD
Chapman Postdoctoral Fellow
Molecular Systematics Laboratories
Department of Ornithology
The American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at West 79th Street
New York, NY 10024-5192
212.313.7784 (office) 212.313.6962 or 212.313.7773 (lab)
email:nyneve at amnh.org or nyneve at myUW.net
work page http://research.amnh.org/ornithology/personnel/bennu.htm
personal pages http://research.amnh.org/users/nyneve/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Source: The Press Democrat, 30 Jan 2004 [edited]
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/local/news/30birds_a1.html


Thousands of ducks die at Clear Lake
--------------------------------------
Volunteers pulled thousands of dead ducks from Clear Lake this week,
hoping to prevent the spread of avian cholera to other waterfowl,
including vulnerable flocks of great blue herons and white pelicans.
As of Thursday, about 3500 ruddy ducks had died, along with a small
number of mallards, egrets, grebes, and scaups, in the first recorded
outbreak of the fast-moving disease in Lake County. Avian cholera is
not believed to attack human beings or other mammals.

The outbreak began 14 Jan 2004, when a flock of about 15 000 ruddy
ducks -- small, chunky diving ducks -- were blown in by a winter
storm, joining a flock of several thousand already at the lake, said
Allan Buckmann, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of
Fish and Game.
On 18 Jan, a game warden saw a dozen dead ducks floating on the lake.
The following day, there were 130 more. At the epidemic's peak, ducks
were dying at the rate of 600 a day.

About 70 volunteers walked the shoreline and went out in boats,
pulling in carcasses, wrapping them in plastic bags, and depositing
them for removal by state Fish and Game, said Sandie Elliott,
director of the Lake County Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.

The disease passes from dead to living birds, and getting rid of the
bodies quickly is the only way to halt the cholera's spread, she
said. Some bodies were incinerated and others buried at the county
landfill. "I'd never seen anything quite like this," Elliott said.
"There's a sadness in the death of so many animals and that we
couldn't do anything to help them."

The outbreak posed a potential crisis for the bird population and for
Anderson Marsh, home to 150 different bird species and one of the
largest great blue heron rookeries in North America, Elliott said.
The bacteria that causes avian cholera has in past years killed
hundreds of thousands of birds in a matter of days in the Central
Valley, where it appears almost every year.

It spreads like the common cold in winter -- by breath or saliva
among the close-packed flocks of migrating waterfowl -- with an onset
so rapid that birds have fallen dead from the air. It also spreads to
birds of prey, such as eagles, vultures, crows and seagulls, which
eat dead ducks.

The migrating ducks arrived during the last week of hunting season,
but hunters are not at risk if they cooked the birds, Buckmann said.
For the past 10 days, volunteers have started out at 9:30 a.m. and
quit only late in the afternoon, from fatigue or when their boats
sagged under the weight of the dead birds, Elliott said.

Lake County Supervisor Jeff Smith cleared his calendar and
volunteered for 3 days, drawing on his experience with avian cholera
in the Klamath basin, as a volunteer with Ducks Unlimited, a national
hunters' group that has poured millions of dollars into habitat
restoration.

"It's just sad to see them," Smith said of the hundreds of dead birds
he brought to shore. "It was one of those fluke things -- the ducks
caught it somewhere else and spread it while they were here. I hope
we never see it again."

There is no investigation under way to determine the origin of the outbreak.

Elliott said the worst moment of the epidemic came Saturday, when the
toll had risen to 500 deaths a day. She had just returned home when
she learned that a flock of 6000 greater and lesser scaups had flown
in and landed among the ruddy ducks. Scaups also are diving birds.

"My heart sank to my knees," she said, her voice breaking at the
memory. "I pictured a massive shoreline of dead ducks." Then, as
suddenly as they arrived, the scaups flew off on Monday, taking the
ruddy duck flock with them.

Volunteers continue to patrol and pull dead ducks from the lake --
some 300 bodies on Wednesday and another 130 on Thursday. They'll
continue at least through Sunday, 3 weeks to the day after the first
dead duck was spotted, Elliott said.

"It's pretty much over, but we are still going to go out there," said
Frank Zarate of the Lake County office of the state Department of
Agriculture, which volunteered 4 boats and 4 seasonal staffers for
the effort.

[Byline: Carol Benfell]

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