Document text
Deadly virus stalks deer Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Deer forage for food just a few blocks from downtown Jacksonville on South Third Street. Biologists believe an unnaturally high concentration of blacktails in the area is contributing to an outbreak of a deadly virus among the herds. At least 10 deaths in Jacksonville herds By MARK FREEMAN JACKSONVILLE - A deadly disease is spreading through Jacksonville's resident blacktail deer herds in what researchers are calling the first outbreak of the adeno virus ever documented among Oregon deer. An Oregon State University scientist confirmed Thursday that a blacktail doe found dead last week outside of Jacksonville suffered from the adeno virus, a disease first documented eight years ago in Northern California. Biologists have attributed to the virus the deaths of at least 10 other deer near Jacksonville in the past two weeks, and possibly a handful of carcasses found last spring in the Pioneer Road area near Medford. The virus attacks the deer's mouth and/or digestive tract, causing a bloody diarrhea that can scour the animal or mouth lesions that keep it from feeding. Humans and pets are not considered at risk. While the adeno virus has similar strains affecting cattle and sheep, there are no known instances of the virus spreading from deer to other animals. A deer can catch the virus simply by breathing air from an infected animal. Biologists believe the unnaturally high concentration of blacktails around Jacksonville - in part because of people feeding the deer or leaving out buckets of water to keep them from crossing Highway 238 to find water - has helped contribute to the virus' spread there. "We tell people, don't feed deer because this kind of stuff can happen," said biologist Mark Vargas, of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. Biologists are looking for more dead deer in the area, hoping to continue testing, said Vargas, who added that the virus is not expected to expand rapidly. "We're hoping it stays isolated in little areas and doesn't go into the migratory deer population," Vargas said. "Right now, we think it won't." But where it does strike, its effects can be vicious, said Dr. Leslie Woods, a pathologist at the University of California at Davis, who discovered the virus in blacktails during a 1993 outbreak in Northern California that killed at least 2,000 deer. The adeno virus can germinate in less than a week after infection. When it does, it is especially tough on fawns, killing as many as 80 percent of them while downing at times one of every four infected adult deer, Woods said. "It's a nasty disease, a nasty virus," Woods said. The only other previous diagnosis of the adeno virus in Oregon occurred last year, when a dead fawn from the Corvallis area tested positive for it, said Dr. Robert Bildfell, from OSU's veterinary diagnostic lab. But Bildfell said the Corvallis case was just an isolated one, unlike the current situation in Jacksonville. "We've never documented an outbreak of the disease like this in Oregon before," Bildfell said. "But that's not to say that it hasn't occurred here before." Woods' research indicates that the virus likely has been around for many years, but its effects have been attributed incorrectly to diseases such as blue tongue, she said. Woods tested tissue saved from blacktails in Siskiyou County, Calif., that were victims of a 1987 die-off attributed to blue tongue and Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease. Those new tests found the adeno virus, indicating that the '87 outbreak was likely mis-diagnosed, Woods said. Southern Oregon had a similar disease outbreak attributed to blue tongue that same year, with several thousand deaths in the Dead Indian Plateau. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.