Week of May 25th

This week was busy with a number of different things on the go. We´re looking for a more permanent office space to establish Veterinarians Without Borders in Chile, so we met with the Director of Extension Services to discuss our role within the university and the community here in Valdivia. Our meeting was very positive and exciting, and will likely lead to something collaborative and long term in the future. Regarding an office space…well we´ll have to be patient while we all start investigating possibilities on and off campus.

It was also a big week in the wildlife department. There is a big project here with a multitude of undergraduate and post-graduate veterinary students working together to learn as much as possible about the pudu, for example: exposure to diseases acquired through contact with cattle and that are a risk to humans, reproductive characteristics, age and gender distribution, general health, intestinal parasites and response to a general anesthetic protocol. These students and the doctor of the wildlife rescue centre worked together to collect as much data as possible in the short time provided by the anesthetic. Everything went well, and all pudus recovered nicely from the anesthetic. Here are some pictures taken in the field:





So what do pudus really have to do with the dog program? Quite a bit actually…let´s talk about interfaces. An interface is simply an area where things meet. We are considering the dog – wildlife interface, and it is quite a problem here as well as in other parts of the world. Pudus live in rural and semi-rural areas all around Valdivia, and it is these pudus that come into unfortunate contact with roaming packs of dogs. Most of the pudus brought into the wildlife rescue centre at the university are those that have been found by members of the community after being attacked by dogs. Here are some of the ones we´ve seen recovering from attacks:

The last time we were in Valdivia, in November 2008, there was also a young puma who had lost his mom when she was also chased then attacked by a pack of roaming dogs. Although it was never clear what happened to her in the end, the result for her baby was that she never returned, and he was brought to the centre. Unfortunately, he was determined to be unreleasable and now lives in a zoo. Here he is when he was first brought to the centre:

Another major issue at the interface between wildlife and dogs is disease transmission. When you have such high numbers of unvaccinated dogs roaming in and around the cities, they can potentially come into contact with wildlife living in the same areas. Many of these species of wildlife are susceptible to canine diseases such as distemper and parvovirus, and any form of contact can result in transmission of the disease. It´s a similar scenario to when smallpox was introduced into indigenous populations of North America in the 1700´s - when a population is completely vulnerable because they have never come into contact with a particular disease before, the results can be absolutely devastating. Very little is known about whether this is happening or not here in Valdivia, but we do know that there are foxes, small wild cats and marine mammals very close to the city that are all susceptible to some of these canine diseases. We hope to investigate this interface together with local wildlife veterinarians, epidemiologists, ecologists and biologists.

This first picture is of the fish market in town right along the water’s edge. There are lots of dogs hanging around during the day hoping for a scrap of food, and at the end of the day, the whole market is hosed down, with much of the water running back into the river. You can imagine that if any of the dogs in the area are sick, and shedding virus in body discharges, this provides the perfect area of contact between dogs and the huge sea lions (or lobos marinos- see bottom picture) that are begging for food on the river side of the market. In this way, transmission of diseases and parasites can occur without the two animals ever having direct contact.

For more information on some other canine outbreaks in wildlife with staggering consequences, follow these links:
1. http://cheval.vet.gla.ac.uk/vetscape/vet-x/lions/
2. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071025094914.htm
3. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol6no6/kennedy.htm
4. http://www.iws.org/island_fox_studies_Santa_Catalina_Island.htm

Here is one last picture for this week, of me working with a young captive fox ¨Tachi¨. She was part of the breeding program on Catalina Island that was built in an attempt to recover the population after a canine distemper outbreak devastated this population (see 4th link above).

Just FYI, the pictures are much better if you click on them and blow them up.

Enjoy, and chau for now!