Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study
Date of this Version
April 2003
Abstract
• USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced the availability of $4 million to state wildlife management agencies for chronic wasting disease (CWD) surveillance and management.
• New Info on Captive Cervids and CWD: including excerpts from "Summary of a Statewide Audit and Inspection of Wisconsin's Captive White-tailed Deer Farms" prepared by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
• New developments since the last CWD update in January 2003 issue: a mule deer buck taken by a hunter on Diamond Mountain near Vernal, Utah, tested positive for CWD. An elk on a Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, farm tested positive for CWD. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the results of an epidemiological investigation of fatal neurologic illnesses in three men who participated in wild game feasts in Wisconsin dating back to 1976.
• Bovine tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a problem in wildlife and cattle in the northern part of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula and is being addressed by the state’s multi-agency Bovine TB Eradication Project.
• The 4th National Conference on West Nile Virus (WNV) in the United States was held in New Orleans, Louisiana, in February 2003.
• The apparent impact of avian vacuolar myelinopathy (AVM) on wild birds in the Southeast during the migratory and wintering season of 2002-2003 has not been as severe as in previous years.
• Exotic Newcastle Disease Found in Texas
• Drs. Donald J. Forrester and Marilyn G. Spalding have recently completed an excellent new book entitled Parasites and Diseases of Wild Birds in Florida published by the University Press of Florida.
• SCWDS Technician Clay George is this year’s winner of the coveted Stoddard-Burleigh-Sutton Award from the University of Georgia.