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Scientists are trying to figure out why dozens of dead birds have been washing up on the Georgian Bay shoreline again in recent days. Local residents are concerned over what it might say about the health of the lake.
The waterfront there is a popular place to walk but residents are finding numerous dead birds on the beach. It's something that has happened before.
Faye Ego takes daily walks along the Georgian Bay shoreline at Allenwood Beach. Ego enjoys watching the wildlife, but sometimes she sees more dead birds than live ones. She's concerned about the bay's health.
"To us and to our neighbours and friends it's about what's going on," she says. "Like why are they dying? There has to be a reason for wash ups. And some years you see hundreds and hundreds. But every year you do see some. You look at them they are young you wonder why did it die?"
Over the long weekend dozens of dead ducks and loons washed in along Wasaga Beach. Wardens with the provincial park collected them. The Ministry of Natural Resources has sent some birds away for testing, but botulism poisoning is suspected because of another massive die off of ducks here in the fall two years ago. It was confirmed then that botulism was the culprit.
© U.S. Centers for Disease Control and PreventionA representation of the structure of a generic flu virus.
The virus, called A/bat/Peru/10, belongs to a family of flu viruses known as influenza A, which mainly infect birds, but can also infect other animals, including people.
Influenza A viruses are named for two proteins on the virus' surface, hemagglutinin (H) and neuraminidase (N), such as H1N1. Previously, there were 17 known types of H proteins and 10 known types of N proteins.
But the proteins on the surface of A/bat/Peru/10 are so distinct, that the researchers designated it a new virus: H18N11.
Last year, the same group of researchers identified a distinct influenza A virus, H17N10, in fruit bats living in Guatemala.
A leading Canadian animal rights group has released secretly-shot video footage of cruelty and abuse of chickens at two Alberta farms.
Canadian Press reports Mercy For Animals Canada recorded the undercover video footage at Creekside Grove Farms in Spruce Grove and Ku-Ku Farms near Edmonton. The video, which was aired on CTV's W5 program last week, shows hens cruelly crowded into battery cages, where they spend their entire lives, as well as chicks having their heads smashed before being thrown into garbage bags to suffocate to death, often while still conscious. The footage also shows dead hens rotting in cages and chicks covered in feces.
The battery cages shown in the video are considered so inhumane that they have been banned in the entire European Union, New Zealand and the US states of California and Michigan, Mercy For Animals Canada said.
Ivan MacFadyen says he was shocked by absence of sea life during his 37,000km voyage between Australia and Japan
An Australian sailor has described parts of the Pacific Ocean as "dead" because of severe overfishing, with his vessel having to repeatedly swerve debris for thousands of kilometres on a journey from Australia to Japan.
Ivan MacFadyen told of his horror at the severe lack of marine life and copious amounts of rubbish witnessed on a yacht race between Melbourne and Osaka. He recently returned from the trip, which he previously completed 10 years ago.
"In 2003, I caught a fish every day," he told Guardian Australia. "Ten years later to the day, sailing almost exactly the same course, I caught nothing. It started to strike me the closer we got to Japan that the ocean was dead.
"Normally when you are sailing a yacht, there are one or two pods of dolphins playing by the boat, or sharks, or turtles or whales. There are usually birds feeding by the boat. But there was none of that. I've been sailing for 35 years and it's only when these things aren't there that you notice them.
MacFadyen said that the lack of ocean life started at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, describing Queensland waters as "barren" and "unquestionably overfished".
© Greenpeace, Alex Hofford/AAPA fishing net on a boat in the Pacific Ocean loaded with tuna and bycatch.
Ivan MacFadyen told of his horror at the severe lack of marine life and copious amounts of rubbish witnessed on a yacht race between Melbourne and Osaka. He recently returned from the trip, which he previously completed 10 years ago.
"In 2003, I caught a fish every day," he told Guardian Australia. "Ten years later to the day, sailing almost exactly the same course, I caught nothing. It started to strike me the closer we got to Japan that the ocean was dead.
"Normally when you are sailing a yacht, there are one or two pods of dolphins playing by the boat, or sharks, or turtles or whales. There are usually birds feeding by the boat. But there was none of that. I've been sailing for 35 years and it's only when these things aren't there that you notice them.
MacFadyen said that the lack of ocean life started at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, describing Queensland waters as "barren" and "unquestionably overfished".
© The Herald, AustraliaIvan Macfadyen aboard the Funnel Web.
Not the absence of sound, exactly.
The wind still whipped the sails and whistled in the rigging. The waves still sloshed against the fibreglass hull.
And there were plenty of other noises: muffled thuds and bumps and scrapes as the boat knocked against pieces of debris.
What was missing was the cries of the seabirds which, on all previous similar voyages, had surrounded the boat.
The birds were missing because the fish were missing.
Exactly 10 years before, when Newcastle yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen had sailed exactly the same course from Melbourne to Osaka, all he'd had to do to catch a fish from the ocean between Brisbane and Japan was throw out a baited line.
"There was not one of the 28 days on that portion of the trip when we didn't catch a good-sized fish to cook up and eat with some rice," Macfadyen recalled.
But this time, on that whole long leg of sea journey, the total catch was two.
No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.
Cyanide has been used to kill 300 elephants in Zimbabwe's biggest nature reserve - three times the original estimate - as new photos show the scale of the slaughter
Poachers in Zimbabwe have killed more than 300 elephants and countless other safari animals by cyanide poisoning, The Telegraph has learned.
The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years.
Pictures taken by the hunters, which have been obtained exclusively by The Telegraph, reveal horrific scenes. Parts of the national park, whose more accessible areas are visited by thousands of tourists each year, can be seen from the air to be littered with the deflated corpses of elephants, often with their young calves dead beside them, as well as those of other animals.
There is now deep concern that the use of cyanide - first revealed in July, but on a scale that has only now emerged - represents a new and particularly damaging technique in the already soaring poaching trade.
Zimbabwean authorities said that 90 animals were killed this way. But the hunters who captured these photographs say they have conducted a wider aerial survey and counted the corpses of more than 300.
© APWorkers look at a rotting elephant carcass in Hwange National Park, Zimbabwe
The full extent of the devastation wreaked in Hwange, the country's largest national park, has been revealed by legitimate hunters who discovered what conservationists say is the worst single massacre in southern Africa for 25 years.
Pictures taken by the hunters, which have been obtained exclusively by The Telegraph, reveal horrific scenes. Parts of the national park, whose more accessible areas are visited by thousands of tourists each year, can be seen from the air to be littered with the deflated corpses of elephants, often with their young calves dead beside them, as well as those of other animals.
There is now deep concern that the use of cyanide - first revealed in July, but on a scale that has only now emerged - represents a new and particularly damaging technique in the already soaring poaching trade.
Zimbabwean authorities said that 90 animals were killed this way. But the hunters who captured these photographs say they have conducted a wider aerial survey and counted the corpses of more than 300.
© Mark Bussey/OceansideA 13.5 foot oarfish was found along the coast in Oceanside, Calif. on Friday.
Beach goers at Oceanside Harbor crossed paths Friday afternoon with the deep-sea monster when its carcass washed ashore, Oceanside Police Officer Mark Bussey said. The fish measured 13 ½ feet long.
The discovery came just days after an 18-foot dead oarfish was found in the waters off Catalina Island.
"The call came out as a possible dead whale stranded on the beach, so we responded and saw the fish on the sand right as it washed up," Bussey said.
Oceanside police then contacted SeaWorld San Diego, the Scripps Research Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Suzanne Kohin of NOAA Fisheries Serivice responded, measured and took possession of the oarfish for research, Bussey said.
Bussey added that people on the beach were "flabbergasted" to see the fish.
The foot-and-mouth disease appears only to be spreading geographically and in intensity across the State, even as the Animal Husbandry Department reiterates that the cattle disease is "under control".
By Wednesday, the disease had claimed 3,060 head of cattle (since September 1), according to official figures with the department, a significant jump from last week's casualty figure of 2,060. Another 23,500 animals have been infected with the virus, as against 16,573 last week.
The disease, which so far had South Karnataka under its grip, now appears to have spread to several other districts, including those in the north of the State such as Bidar, Bellary and Belgaum.
Deputy Director of the Animal Husbandry Department Sriram Reddy, however, said the disease was "under control" and that the department was continuing its "ring vaccination" of cattle within a specified radius of affected villages.
By Wednesday, the disease had claimed 3,060 head of cattle (since September 1), according to official figures with the department, a significant jump from last week's casualty figure of 2,060. Another 23,500 animals have been infected with the virus, as against 16,573 last week.
The Animal Husbandry Department has reiterated that the cattle disease is 'under control.'
The disease, which so far had South Karnataka under its grip, now appears to have spread to several other districts, including those in the north of the State such as Bidar, Bellary and Belgaum.
Deputy Director of the Animal Husbandry Department Sriram Reddy, however, said the disease was "under control" and that the department was continuing its "ring vaccination" of cattle within a specified radius of affected villages.
© Martin Griff/The Times of TrentonDOT workers say an increasing number of roadside deer carcasses are discovered decapitated.
Department of Transportation workers tell News 12 that many are taking the heads for show.
George Dante, the owner of a taxidermy shop in Woodland Park, told News 12 that "When they (sportsmen) see an animal by the side of the road with this magnificent headgear on it, you can't help but stop and take it home."
Police want residents to know that taking deer heads is against the law, and those who are caught can be fined $500 the first time and up to $1,000 for a second offense, the report said.
Residents in New Jersey are allowed to keep roadkill to eat, the report said, as long as they have a permit from the Fish and Wildlife Commission.
"We would love to be able to pick up a roadkill and recycle it and turn it into a beautiful mount, give it to an environmental center," Dante told News 12. "Unfortunately, we're not allowed to recycle our wildlife."
A Wamberal man received the shock of his life when he stumbled on a writhing ball of snakes in his backyard.
What he did not know was that they weren't interested in him, but in one another. He had stumbled on a bizarre snake mating ritual.
Christopher Finch said he had never seen anything like the "hellhole" of diamond pythons, some up to 2.5m long, on his property - just a short stroll from neighbouring houses and the Central Coast Highway.
Christopher Finch and the largest Diamond Python from his Wamberal back garden. Source: News Limited
Comment: See also.
18-foot oarfish caught by Catalina marine science instructor in California
Something amiss deep down? Bizarre-looking oarfish washes ashore on Cabo San Lucas beach
Appearance of "Earthquake fish" spook Japanese
Rare "King of Herrings" Found off Swedish Coast
England: Monster of deep washes up on beach