Avian cholera may spread in Arctic: scientists

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Avian cholera may spread in Arctic: scientists​

Last Updated: Thursday, January 20, 2011 | 11:28 AM ETCBC News

Avian cholera could spread into areas of the Arctic, including parts of Canada and Greenland, where the disease has not been present before, scientists say.

The potent bacterial disease is naturally occurring and highly contagious in birds, but not to humans.​

Avian cholera has usually been found in more southern parts of North America, but it has killed thousands of common eider ducks and other birds in Canada's eastern Arctic since 2004.​

"We're perplexed [with] how it spreads and how it is persisting," Grant Gilchrist, a research scientist with Environment Canada, told CBC News.​

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2011/01/20/north-avian-cholera-eider-ducks.html#ixzz1Bb95FjvI​

 

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Re: Avian cholera may spread in Arctic: scientists

Cholera killing thousands of ducks in the Arctic​

Carleton University, Environment Canada to study disease

By Tom Spears, Ottawa Citizen January 24, 2011 ​

A new bird disease has arrived in Canada's Arctic, one so lethal it can kill thousands of ducks in a dense colony in a lightning-fast outbreak.

Eider ducks stricken with avian cholera can die so fast that they remain upright on their eggs, eyes open. Some fall out of the sky, dead. Others survive unharmed, surrounded by corpses.

Now Carleton University and Environment Canada will get more than half a million dollars to study the disease -- which birds get it, how it spreads, why some survive, and how it arrived in the Arctic after decades of existing farther south. ​

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/techno...ducks+Arctic/4155813/story.html#ixzz1C09luroW