Seven years of carefully planned habitat restoration on private land in the Mojave Desert have yielded hope for the persistence of the endangered Amargosa vole.
Scientists from the University of California, Davis created network-based models to prioritize novel and known viruses for their risk of zoonotic transmission, which is when infectious diseases pass between animals and humans.
While COVID-19 has been racing through much of the human population, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has also turned up in other mammals. This leads to many questions.
Zooming from flower to flower in a flash of iridescent green and fuchsia pink, the Anna’s hummingbird seems to be one of California’s wildlife success stories. Native to Southern California, the tiny fliers are now common throughout the state and seen on snowy branches in Alaska and cacti in Arizona.
Un brote de sarna ha diezmado la población de vicuñas y guanacos en un parque nacional argentino creado para su conservación, según un estudio de la Administración de Parques Nacionales de Argentina y la Universidad de California en Davis. Los resultados, publicados en la revista PLOS ONE, sugieren que un grupo de llamas introducidas en cercanías del parque podrían haber sido el origen del brote. Se esperan consecuencias para las especies depredadoras y carroñeras locales.
The three resident turkey vultures at the California Raptor Center (CRC) got new digs this summer! Thanks to a generous grant from the McBeth Foundation, the center staff worked with the cage design company Corners Limited, Inc. to design an exhibit to house Juliet (28+ years old, wing injury) and Merry and Pippin (3-year-old siblings, human imprinted). The cage was installed in July 2021.
As colder weather arrives in California, UC Davis researchers urge wildlife rehabilitators and veterinary professionals working with raptors to take extra health precautions against a Chlamydia strain found in several species that might potentially cause serious disease in humans as well.
Western snowy plovers, listed as federally threatened under the Endangered Species Act and considered a “species of special concern” in California, were some of the animals rescued by OWCN wildlife responders during the Orange County oil spill.
In the early 2000s, a fungus infected hundreds of animals and people in British Columbia and Washington State. Scientists found that the disease also killed porpoises and dolphins in the Salish Sea – perhaps affecting cetaceans even earlier than people.
