Category: Nuisance Wildlife Management

Nuisance wildlife management is the term given to the process of selective removal of problem individuals or populations of specific species of wildlife. Other terms for the field include wildlife damage management, wildlife control, and animal damage control to name a few.

Amid pandemic, bat biologists change course

Fieldwork involving bats is being cut back due to efforts to contain the novel coronavirus.
©Gary Peeples/USFWS

OVID-19 has affected everyone, and wildlifers are no exception. In this series, TWS is looking at challenges facing the profession due to the pandemic.

Biologists in Arizona became concerned last year when they found the fungus that causes the deadly bat disease white-nose syndrome in low but detectable levels at the Grand Canyon. This year, they planned to increase surveillance for the fungus  — there and throughout the state — to see if it was still present and whether or not it was increasing.

Instead, that work has been suspended due to efforts to curtail the spread of COVID-19.

Read More

NIH’s axing of bat coronavirus grant a ‘horrible precedent’ and might break rules, critics say

A now-canceled grant from the National Institutes of Health allowed researchers associated with the EcoHealth Alliance to gather samples from bats, which can carry viruses that jump to other animals and humans. ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE

The research community is reacting with alarm and anger to the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) abrupt and unusual termination of a grant supporting research in China on how coronaviruses—such as the one causing the current pandemic—move from bats to humans.
The agency axed the grant last week, after conservative U.S. politicians and media repeatedly suggested—without evidence—that the pandemic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China, that employs a Chinese virologist who had been receiving funding from the grant. The termination, which some analysts believe might violate regulations governing NIH, also came 7 days after President Donald Trump, asked about the project at a press conference, said: “We will end that grant very quickly.”

Read More