http://joomla.wildlife.org/twplogin The Wildlife Professional is a magazine containing news and analysis designed to keep today's wildlife professionals informed about critical advances in wildlife science, conservation, management, and policy. It features in-depth articles, as well as brief summaries of relevant scientific articles and profiles of professional wildlife managers. Additional columns cover topics such as health and disease, human-wildlife connections, and ethics in practice. Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:21:55 GMT ListGarden Program 1.3.1 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss By Lisa Moore <br> So what’s the big deal about 75 years? Though just a blip in evolutionary time, this modest two-digit number marks a milestone in the life of The Wildlife Society, founded 75 years ago this year and growing stronger than ever. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By David A. Jessup and Colin Gillin <br> Once again, Aldo Leopold proves visionary. Nearly 80 years after his initial observation, we daily see the specter of wildlife disease exerting major influence on state, federal, provincial, tribal, and private wildlife management activities. New diseases have emerged and old ones have reemerged and/or moved around against a backdrop of increasing human and wildlife population densities and habitat loss and degradation. Humans clearly have a major hand in the problem—but also in the solution. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Scott E. Hygnstrom and Richard N. Brown <br> The issue of disease is relevant to anyone studying or managing wildlife populations. Most diseases are caused by infectious and/or parasitic agents (such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, flatworms, nematodes, and arthropods), and some cause problems severe enough to force managers to act. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT Readers of The Wildlife Professional voice their thoughts and opinions on topics covered in previous issues of the magazine. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT Summaries of the latest scientific research and findings related to wildlife management. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT Summaries of the latest wildlife news and events across North America and the rest of the world. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Jessica P. Johnson <br> Deana Clifford can’t remember a time when she didn’t want to work with animals. Her interest eventually led her to the University of California at Davis (UC Davis), where she chose to study wildlife medicine rather than the more lucrative but predictable specialty of pet or livestock care. “You never know what you’ll be faced with or working on every day,” she says. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT When Jonna Mazet started vet school at UC Davis in 1988, she felt that her options for a specialty were very limited. There were programs for zoo medicine and animal care, but nothing involving wildlife. But during her second year, the Pew Charitable Trusts granted funding to begin the country’s first wildlife veterinary specialty within her program. A short time later, Mazet gave her first conference talk at The Wildlife Society’s Western Section meeting. There, she discovered the urgent need for wildlife vets. “I wanted to help save the world …. I wanted to work where animals and people were in conflict; where making changes in human habits would help alleviate that conflict.” Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By David A. Jessup <br> Disease, whether in humans or animals, is broadly defined as “any disturbance in physiologic function that compromises health.” If revised to say “any disturbance in demographic function that compromises ecologic health,” the definition could also apply to wildlife populations and ecosystems. We are used to thinking about diseased wild animals, or the health of a wildlife population, but today, many disease ecologists and wildlife health professionals are beginning to recognize that even ecosystems—whole complexes of biotic and abiotic entities—can become unhealthy and degraded, losing resiliency and sustainability. Given proper treatment and time, sick wild animals, unhealthy wildlife populations, and degraded ecosystems may be able to recover, but therein lies the challenge for wildlife professionals. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Milton Friend <br> When I began my career as an assistant waterfowl biologist in 1956, wildlife disease was not a major concern for conservation agencies. Some states—such as California, Michigan, New York, Wyoming, and Colorado—had small internal wildlife disease programs to investigate wildlife mortality events, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) had a program focused on migratory birds. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Jonathan Sleeman and Colin Gillin <br> In the recent film Contagion, a medical thriller released in fall 2011, the fictitious MEV-virus—passed from bat to pig to humans—spreads across the globe as easily as the common cold, killing millions of humans and causing mass hysteria as medical researchers race to find a cure. Though it’s Hollywood hyperbole, the film holds a kernel of truth: Researchers believe that the close proximity of Malaysian hog farms to forested areas—the natural habitat for fruit bats—allowed the previously unknown Nipah virus to spill from bats into pigs and subsequently into people, resulting in more than 100 human deaths (Epstein et al. 2006). Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Michael D. Kock, William R. Lance, and David A. Jessup <br> In the early 1960s, when Kariba Dam rose between Zambia and Zimbabwe backing up the Zambezi River to form Lake Kariba, thousands of wild animals—including antelope, black rhinoceros, carnivores, and reptiles—became stranded in a rapidly changing landscape. Conservationists soon began a wildlife salvage effort dubbed “Operation Noah,” which included some of the first efforts to chemically immobilize wildlife using dart guns. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Michael J. Yabsley, John R. Fischer, and Sonia M. Hernandez <br> In March 2011, a resident of Deschutes County, Oregon, died of hantavirus, a disease primarily carried by rodents. County health officials said it was the 16th confirmed case of hantavirus in Oregon since 1993 (The Columbian). This is one small example of a growing global problem involving the rise of zoonoses—diseases for which a pathogen can be naturally transmitted from domestic animals or wildlife to humans. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Melissa Miller, Raphael Kudela, and David A. Jessup <br> In November 2007, an unexplained crisis began to unfold in California’s Monterey Bay. There, hundreds of dead and dying seabirds began to wash ashore with a slimy greenish-yellow crust on their feathers. All live birds showed signs of severe hypothermia. The strandings occurred during a “red tide”—a relatively common event in which colored algae bloom, sometimes in massive quantities, and can produce dangerous toxins that sicken or kill marine life. Yet the strandings in Monterey Bay were like nothing any of us had previously seen. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Tonie E. Rocke and Rachel C. Abbott <br> After achieving promising results in laboratory trials, researchers at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) and University of Wisconsin at Madison will soon begin field testing a new oral vaccine for sylvatic plague, a devastating disease affecting prairie dogs and other mammals, particularly the endangered black-footed ferret. Our team has developed and is currently registering a sylvatic plague vaccine (SPV) that uses raccoon poxvirus (RCN) to express two key antigens of the Yersinia pestis bacterium, the causative agent of plague. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Anne H. Toomey, Mark Weckel, Chris Nagy, Linda J. Gormezano, and Scott Silver In March of 2010, a young 30-pound eastern coyote (Canis latrans) led police on a two-day chase through the concrete maze of lower Manhattan, culminating in the capture of the animal in a Tribeca parking lot near the southern tip of the island. This was not the first coyote to visit the Big Apple. Earlier in 2010, up to four other coyotes had been reportedly sighted in various parts of Manhattan, including three animals roaming the Columbia University campus late one winter night and one temporary resident in Central Park, caught on video at various times over a two-month period (Spodak 2010). Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Madeleine Thomas <br> On January 8, 2010, George Pauley and Craig White—both research biologists for Idaho Fish and Game—were flying above Idaho’s Clearwater River region in a Hughes 500 helicopter during a project that involved trapping and radio-collaring elk, moose, and wolves for study. Everything was going according to plan until a bearing in the helicopter’s turbine engine compressor failed. At 800 feet above ground, the helicopter suddenly went into complete engine failure. For Pauley, the scene was sickeningly familiar: He had survived a helicopter crash in 1997, also while conducting aerial surveys for Idaho Fish and Game. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Michael L. Gibeau <br> Wildlife biologists who promote conservation tend to share a certain frame of reference. Most of us got into the wildlife business because of our love of nature and animals. That’s what led me to my long career of working with grizzly bears in Canada’s Banff National Park. But something changed during my career that has fundamentally rearranged the way I think—not just about biology, or bears, but about almost everything I do in my life. I’ve come to understand a more comprehensive way to solve problems. By sharing it, I hope to provide an alternative to the way fellow biologists approach problem solving. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Bill Jensen <br> During the 2011 Plenary Session of The Wildlife Society’s Annual Conference in Hawaii, then TWS President Tom Ryder described the history of wildlife management in North America as falling into three periods of crisis. The first was the wholesale exploitation of wildlife in the late 1800s, the second revolved around habitat destruction in the 1930s, and the third crisis involves the current lack of political will to take collaborative action. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Ellen Paul, John Alexander, Susan Finnegan, Alexander L. Bond, Jeffrey A. Stratford, and Scott Weidensaul <br> We request retraction of the Point-Counterpoint article by Marlene Condon titled “Is It Time to Halt Bird Banding?” that ran in the fall 2011 issue of The Wildlife Professional (Condon 2011). Though the magazine is not peer-reviewed per se, publication by the highly regarded Wildlife Society implies that a peer-review process is in place. Further, the magazine’s contributor guidelines state that articles “are usually sent to outside experts for review to ensure completeness and accuracy of information” and that they contain “sound, verified information and well-supported arguments.” Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Charlotte Weaver <br> In February of 2011, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) introduced Senate bill 357, the Wildlife Disease Emergency Act of 2011. Prompted by the emergence of white-nose syndrome (WNS) in bats in New Jersey in 2009, the act—which is still in committee—would authorize the Secretary of the Interior to identify and declare wildlife disease emergencies, establish a fund to coordinate rapid responses to those emergencies, and address harmful wildlife diseases with actions coordinated among federal, state, tribal, and local agencies and nongovernmental organizations. The power to declare an emergency would help clear the way for appropriate funding and rapid action. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Douglas H. Johnson <br> Receiving the Aldo Leopold Award was an incredible honor for me, a statistician who fell in love with birds and the natural world. I knew of Leopold mostly from reading A Sand County Almanac multiple times. Receiving an award named after him motivated me to learn more about the man. I found that we have more in common than I had anticipated. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT Summaries and practical tips from wildlife biologists. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT News and happenings from The Wildlife Society Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT By Divya Abhat <br> Almost a century before The Wildlife Society came into being, its historic foundations were well underway. In the mid- to late- 1800s, industrialization and market gunners in the U.S. and Canada took their toll on wildlife and habitat, leading to the near demise of several species. Concerned about species survival, sport hunters joined forces to turn the tide. Thus began the conservation movement in North America, a movement that gave rise to the wildlife profession and our Society. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT View stunning photos of wildlife. Thur, March 15, 2012 13:59:34 EDT