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Utila Chachalaca (Ortalis vetula deschauenseei)
The good news is that the Utila Chachalaca (proposed as extinct by USFWS) was still present on Utila,
Honduras, in 2000-2001 and may not be extinct.
David Anderson
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COLOMBIA:
Universidad de Antioquia
Rapito -dai guerrilieri della FARC
l'ornitologo Diego Calderòn Franco assieme al
     Prof. Ermes Cuadros Villalobo, botanico,
     e alla loro guida locale, Jose Alberto Saurith
durante una spedizione ornitologica nella Sierra de Perija,
lungo il confine fra il Venezuela e la Colombia,
per studiare i Colibrì.
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foto (c) scricciolo.com
Diego Calderòn Franco
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il giovane studente del Programa de Biología de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales
dell' Università di Antioquia in Medellín, ben conosciuto da Scricciolo, partecipava attivamente
alla mailing list Uccelli Tropicali [NEOORN] .
Nella speranza che tutta la vicenda possa risolversi quanto prima
un grosso incoraggiamento: Forza Diego, Ermes e Jose Alberto !
Diego purtroppo è ammalato di diabete in forma cronica e ha bisogno giornalmente di insulina.
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     l' e-mail ricevuto da Scricciolo

         L' interessamento

29 gennaio 2004-
Subject: Influenza aviare

This just in from Channel news asia:
HONG KONG: As bird flu takes a greater hold of Asia and answers are sought to
what brought the scourge, officials are lining up to blame migratory and wild
birds for spreading the virus. National health and agriculture chiefs have
joined World Health Organisation (WHO) officials in making foreign birds the
scapegoats for the present outbreaks. At the same time experts are providing
more and more scientific evidence to support the politicians' claims.>

How does this affect exports. Well, take a look at this:

EU suspends imports of Pet Birds from South East Asia

The Standing Committee of the Food Chain and Animal Health, representing the
Member States, has agreed to a proposal from EU Health and Consumer Protection
Commissioner David Byrne to suspend imports of pet birds to provide maximum
assurance following a detailed discussion with the Member States of the emerging
situation in South East Asia. This move is in order to exclude any possible risk
for avian influenza virus occurring in quarantine stations in the Member States.
Imports have been suspended from Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Pakistan,
People's Republic of China (including Hong Kong), South Korea, Thailand and
Vietnam with immediate effect. The birds concerned include exotic tropical birds
such as parrots, cockatoos, finches, budgerigars, hawks and falcons.


Risolto il mistero della morte massiccia degli Avvoltoi
Subject: Mysterious mass die-off of vultures solved
08:00 29 January 04
 NewScientist.com news service

The catastrophic decline of griffon vultures in south Asia is being caused not by a mysterious disease, as had been thought, but a common painkiller given to sick cattle.
If the treated animal dies and is eaten by vultures, a single meal can be enough to kill the bird. The scientists who made the discovery now want the drug banned from veterinary use and are holding a meeting next week with officials from Nepal, India and Pakistan.
Griffon vultures are huge scavengers and used to be ubiquitous in south Asia. But their population has declined drastically since the mid-1990s, and one species is near extinction.
As a result, animal carcasses rot outside villages, attracting rabies-ridden packs of dogs. The Parsee religious community in India is also in crisis, as it disposes of its dead by feeding them to vultures.
Acid crystals
Lindsay Oaks, a veterinary microbiologist at Washington State University in Pullman, and colleagues looked for pathogens or toxins in freshly dead vultures from breeding colonies in Pakistan and Nepal by sending tissues back to US laboratories for analysis.
Efforts by Andrew Cunningham of the Zoological Society of London, UK, and colleagues to establish the cause of the vultures' decline in India were hindered by that county's laws banning the export of genetic material.
Vultures that have died in the decline have kidney damage and uric acid crystals throughout their bodies, but Oaks's group could find no disease germs or environmental toxins. Vultures that died following pesticide poisoning or collisions had no uric acid.
"We started wondering if they could be exposed to any veterinary drugs in the dead livestock they eat," says Oaks. They discovered that diclofenac, which can cause kidney damage, is very heavily prescribed by local vets, and its use increased over the same time period as the vulture decline. The cheap drug is used to treat lameness and injury - common conditions before a buffalo or cow dies.
Tiny dose
Analysis of the kidneys of dead vultures with uric acid symptoms revealed diclofenac residues, while no residues were found in other birds.
The researchers also gave diclofenac, and meat from animals treated with diclofenac, to 20 non-releasable vultures rescued from nesting colonies. "We hated to do it," says Oaks. The diclofenac killed these vultures in very small doses, with the same symptoms as the dead, wild vultures. Furthermore, the higher the dose of the drug, the more likely the vultures were to die.
Vultures come from miles around to feed on a carcass, so each gets a small bit of many animals. Rhys Green of the UK's Royal Society of the Protection for Birds calculates that only one in 250 dead cattle needs to have been recently treated with diclofenac to cause a decline in vultures of 30 per cent per year - about what has been observed.
Cunningham is now trying to find out whether diclofenac is also responsible for the decline in India. "This may be a breakthrough", he told New Scientist. "We hope so, as this would greatly improve the chances for an eventual recovery of the species."
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Journal reference: Nature
Debora MacKenzie