Posted on 04/19/2006 2:44:47 PM PDT by blam
Bird flu's 'risk to biodiversity'
By Helen Briggs
BBC News science reporter
The Owston's civet is prized by bushmeat restaurants
The spread of bird flu poses serious risks to biodiversity, say scientists who have detailed an outbreak of the virus in Owston's civets.
The mammal is a small, endangered carnivore that lives in the forests of Vietnam, Laos and southern China.
Three animals died at a conservation centre in northern Vietnam last summer. It is not known how they contracted the virus, as they do not eat poultry.
The scientists report the cases in a journal of the UK's Royal Society.
The team - from the UK, Vietnam and China - call for better monitoring of the H5N1 virus in wild animals.
"H5N1 could pose a risk to a variety of wild birds and mammals," lead author Diana Bell, of the Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Conservation at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, told the BBC News website.
"We need to be screening wild birds and mammals in those countries where the virus has been present for some time.
"We mustn't be totally anthropocentric in our focus on H5N1. It doesn't only kill humans and poultry; it also kills a wide variety of wild birds and carnivorous mammals."
Biodiversity threat
H5N1 has killed birds in at least 11 of the 27 avian orders, including gulls, storks, pigeons, eagles, cranes, pelicans, parrots and owls.
Tigers contracted bird flu after eating infected poultry
It has also infected tigers, leopards and domestic cats fed contaminated meat, and ferrets and mice in laboratory studies.
Dr Bell's team warns that the disease poses a threat to bird and mammal biodiversity in many Asian countries that are "global hotspots" for conservation.
"This report illustrates the ease with which this influenza A H5N1 virus can cross species barriers and reinforces the pandemic concern engendered by its progressively increasing geographic range," they write in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
The civets that died were part of a conservation scheme in Cuc Phuong National Park that coordinates an international breeding programme for the species.
Owston's civet (Chrotogale owstoni) is listed as globally threatened and is losing numbers to hunting and trapping.
Its meat is prized by bushmeat restaurants, its body parts by traditional medicine makers and its skin by taxidermists in Vietnam and China.
>The spread of bird flu poses serious risks to biodiversity, say scientists who have detailed an outbreak of the virus in Owston's civets.
Yawn.
Perhaps you should troll elsewhere.
Subject matter's over your head, eh...?The article is straightforward enough. It's just awfully boring, wouldn't you say?--achingly uninteresting, a total snoozer, a dog-bites-man story without the bite, as compelling as dryer lint only a lot more gray.
Terrorists are a risk to university diversity too but Yale isn't concerned.
Unbelievably stupid comment. your time here may be quite short.
Sure, it's a big deal if you happen to be that species, but come on--do we have to use that stinking D-word to attach importance to everything??? How about an article on "Bird Flu May Kill Many Thousands of People, Dogs and Cats"? Or is life not as important to protect than some kind of diversgggrrh. I can't even say the word anymore. I wish Bird Flu would come and kill some of the D-word stuff here in WA state. < /soapbox>
Hopefully the the geese that crap all over the golf course will be the first to go.
Do they really mean to say that Mother Nature is undermining biodiversity? That maybe She doesn't realize what she's doing?
So you would like to see the extinction of a species because they crap on golf courses?
Diverrggh. Dihhhhhhhhhhhhu! Di-di-di-di-dirrrrrr!!!
It's no use.
"So you would like to see the extinction of a species because they crap on golf courses?"
Well I don't crap on their nests. They should learn some manners.
You sleep on golf courses?
--You sleep on golf courses?
Some people say so.
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