Background Articles

With the number of COVID-19 cases outside of China increasing 13-fold, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a global pandemic on Thursday, urging governments “to take urgent and aggressive action” to stop its spread.

Scientists sampling ice cores from a glacier in China discovered 28 viruses that had been frozen in time for as long as 15,000 years, and were not previously known to mankind.

As Australia experiences record-breaking drought and bushfires, koala populations have dwindled along with their habitat, leaving them “functionally extinct.”

As sea ice in the Arctic decreases due to climate change, it’s opening the way for more than cruise ship travel. Scientists have found evidence that links the decline of sea ice to the emergence of a virus in Arctic marine mammals that has killed thousands of seals in European waters.

When scientists found that Alaska sea otters were exposed to a sometimes-deadly virus that plagues seals in the North Atlantic, they were puzzled. Phocine distemper virus had not been previously found in Alaska waters.

When sea otters in Alaska were diagnosed with phocine distemper virus (PDV) in 2004, scientists were confused. The pathogen in the Morbillivirus genus that contains viruses like measles had then only been found in Europe and on the eastern coast of North America.

After kneeling in defrosted marine mammal goo ... doctors treated me for a seal finger infection," Peterson wrote. Seal finger is a bacterial infection that hunters contract from handling the body parts of seals. The only seals Peterson had handled were those in the log cabin. Those seals had been frozen in permafrost for decades.

Climate change has warmed the waters east of Tasmania at four times the speed of the global average. But the heatwave of the southern summer of 2015/2016 was something exceptional, damaging fisheries and bringing new species to the island. It's a sign of things to come, say the researchers examining these events.

Warming Arctic temperatures can create an environment friendly to bacterial infections like anthrax, an infection spread by contact with bacterial spores, which plant-eating animals may eat or breathe in while grazing.

Contagious cancers occur in clams and other bivalves, and some can even spread between different species of bivalves.

Right now, a lethal strain of bird flu is wreaking havoc in the Lower 48. It’s clear that migrating flocks have something to do with spreading the illness between farms and across continents -- but exactly what is still fuzzy. A remote spot in Southwest Alaska may hold some clues. Download Audio

All persons practicing veterinary medicine in North Carolina shall report these listed diseases and conditions to the State Veterinarian's office by telephone within two hours after the disease is reasonably suspected to exist.

A total of 80 stockfish fillets of Northeast Arctic cod (Gadus morhua), traditionally open-air-dried in northern Norway, was examined for the presence and viability of larval parasitic nematodes of the family Anisakidae. Anisakids (particularly those belonging to genera Anisakis and Pseudoterranova) are of public health and economic concern globally, since they are responsible for an underestimated fish-borne zoonotic disease called anisakidosis.

"White-nose syndrome" was found in Ontario and Quebec caves, mines and attics in the winter of 2009-2010. A decade after a devastating fungus first appeared in Ontario, wiping out up to 95 per cent of the province’s bats, scientists are beginning to see encouraging signs that bats may be on the rebound.

Idaho’s most controversial predator could play a role in managing the spread of a deadly deer and elk disease, according to a leading research scientist.

“Our past research in western Alaska has shown that while we have not detected the highly pathogenic avian influenza virus, up to 70 per cent of the other avian influenza viruses isolated in this area were found to contain genetic material from Eurasia, providing evidence for high levels of intercontinental viral exchange,” said Andy Ramey, a scientist with the USGS and lead author of the recent report. “This is because Asian and North American migratory flyways overlap in western Alaska.”

Alaska Wildlife News is an online magazine published by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game

By Ed Struzik. This article was originally published on Yale Environment 360. Canadian scientist Philip Marsh and I were flying along the coast of the Beaufort Sea, where the frozen tundra had recently opened up into a crater the size of a football stadium. Located along the shoreline of an unnamed lake, the so-called thaw...

Arctic fox rabies is enzootic in populations of arctic and red fox populations along Alaska’s northern and western coasts. This means rabies is always present in these populations at some low level but periodically there can be outbreaks called epizootics (an outbreak in animal disease rather than an epidemic as is it is called when occurring in a human population). However, the winter of 2020-2021 ushered in a widespread outbreak with persistent and large focus in and around Nome.

Biologists are collecting samples from moose and mustelids — that’s wolverines, minks and martens. There are plans to test caribou and Sitka black tail deer, as well as seals and belugas.