A young black bear whose paws were burned raw in the Carr Fire is recuperating with special care from a wildlife veterinary team.
On Monday, an eight-member team including Dr. Deana Clifford and Dr. Jamie Peyton of the UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital spent nearly six hours preparing for the operation and sewing tilapia skin onto the bear's four paws. One benefit of the fish skin — which doesn't smell fishy — is that it contains collagen that aids in healing.
To prevent the next pandemic, pinpoint it at the source. That’s the idea behind PREDICT, a global surveillance program that has spent almost 10 years hunting for new viruses that could spill over from vulnerable wildlife to humans.
In May, two critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals were found dead on a beach on Oahu. Both were female, and one was pregnant. After performing a necropsy, veterinarians determined that both animals died of toxoplasmosis, a potentially fatal disease that originates in domestic cats.
For the last three years, not one calf has been born to the dwindling pods of black-and-white killer whales spouting geysers of mist off the coast in the Pacific Northwest. Their population decline is alarming and may be due to several factors.
