Infectious wildlife disease News

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A chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) is weighed at a live poultry market in West Harlem as a customer stands nearby. The stacking of live animal cages allows bodily waste to drop into the cages below, facilitating disease spread. Image by Cate Twining-Ward.

Avian bird flu surges in New York urban wildlife, increasing disease concerns

Cate Twining-Ward 7 Apr 2026
Muskoxen on Ellesmere Island. As a species, muskoxen have been around for a million years and are often called “ice-age survivors.” Though they have one of the lowest levels of genetic diversity of any mammal, the full suite of immune-related genes are intact in the species, says muskox expert Anne Gunn.

Canadian muskoxen hit by double punch of novel diseases and climate change

Ruth Kamnitzer 3 Apr 2026
Birds crowded and under severe stress make open-air markets like the Parangaba Fair in Fortaleza ideal locations for the spread of diseases.

Open-air markets: hotspots for a lethal virus infecting macaws and parrots

Fernanda Wenzel 27 Mar 2026

Captive-bred Panamanian golden frogs released to the wild

Rhett Ayers Butler 20 Mar 2026
UC Santa Cruz researcher in Hazmat suit taking nasal sample from elephant seal pup, Ano Nuevo State Park, California, USA.

Avian flu strikes California’s northern elephant seals; area quarantined

Christine Heinrichs 27 Feb 2026

In Panama, poison dart frog move brings hope amid amphibians’ fight with fungus

Sam Meadows 8 Oct 2025
A black-faced spider monkey. Image by Patrick Müller via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

Yellow fever deaths reported among threatened captive monkeys in Colombia

Mongabay.com 9 Sep 2025

There’s hope for sunflower sea stars, with their killer unmasked and reintroductions pending

Darren Incorvaia, Sharon Guynup 18 Aug 2025
Sunflower sea star in Knight Inlet, Canada. Image courtesy of Grant Callegari/Hakai Institute.

Scientists identify the bacterium behind billions of sea star deaths

Shreya Dasgupta 8 Aug 2025
The Andean cat is a rare and endangered species highly specialized to life in the high Andes. It’s estimated that around 2,000 mature individuals, living in fragmented populations, are spread very thinly over a vast alpine expanse in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru.

Endangered Andean cat is imperiled by climate change and its solutions

Sean Mowbray 10 Jul 2025
Corals and fish in Lighthouse Reef atoll, Belize.

Restoration, protection aim to save Belize’s coral reef from extreme heat and disease

Marco Lopez 9 Jul 2025
A diver applies an amoxicillin paste to stony coral tissue loss disease-affected corals in Roatan, Honduras. The antibiotic paste can slow or halt lesion progression. Image by Antonio Busiello.

Researchers race to understand disease killing Caribbean corals at unprecedented rates

Ruth Kamnitzer 6 Jun 2025
Blackwater oxbow lake in the Amazon. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.

Why WHO’s pandemic prevention draft agreement takes a nature-centric, One Health approach (commentary)

Chris Walzer, Susan Lieberman, Christine Franklin 13 May 2025
An endangered long-tailed macaque peeks out from a cage having been exported from Vietnam to Europe. Image supplied by Animal Rights BE.

Report alleges criminality in Cambodian, Vietnamese monkey trade

Gerald Flynn 21 Apr 2025
Banner image of a hoary fox by Augusto Gomes for Mongabay.

Meet Brazil’s often-seen but little-known hoary fox

Mongabay.com 16 Apr 2025
Banner image of a yellow fever mosquito (Aedes aegypti) by James Gathany, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Dry season predictability and temperature drive dengue cases: Study

Kristine Sabillo 10 Mar 2025
Image of a Madras hedgehog by Santhosh Krishnan13 via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

The rarely seen Madras hedgehog in India is also poorly studied

Mongabay.com 26 Feb 2025

U.S. reports first human death from H5N1 bird flu

Mongabay.com 7 Jan 2025

In Colombia, a simple fencing fix offers a win-win for wildlife and ranchers

Marlowe Starling 28 Nov 2024

How nature protection and inspiring art are key to planetary health & preventing pandemics

Mike DiGirolamo 26 Nov 2024
A bobcat navigates a snow-covered branch along the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park.

Bobcats are back, and they’re helping protect people from zoonotic disease

Christine Woodside 12 Nov 2024
leopard ntnc Nepal

Canine distemper likely infecting & killing Nepal’s leopards, study shows

Abhaya Raj Joshi 29 Sep 2024
Researchers Luciana Gallo (left) and Marcela Uhart (right) sampling for the Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza strain (HPAI) of the H5N1 virus in Punta Leon, Argentina in early November 2023.

As bird flu outbreak kills myriad wildlife species, virologists eye threat to humans

Mike DiGirolamo 20 Aug 2024
More than 95% of southern elephant seal pups (Mirounga leonina) born in 2023 perished in that year from the deadly outbreak of avian influenza.

Animal apocalypse: Deadly bird flu infects hundreds of species pole-to-pole

Sharon Guynup 6 Aug 2024

How an international effort is keeping North America free of a deadly amphibian disease

Mike DiGirolamo 30 Jul 2024
Pneumonia in bighorn sheep induces coughing which can be detected acoustically. Image by Noah Israel/Wikimedia Commons.

The potential for tracking wildlife health & disease via bioacoustics is great (commentary)

Jesse Turner 10 Apr 2024

Peru’s illegal pet monkey trade is also an infection superhighway

Carla Ruas 14 Mar 2024
A juvenile northern pig-tailed macaque (Macaca leonina) held in a cage outside a gas station in Cambodia. Image by Gerald Flynn / Mongabay.

Impunity for Cambodia’s exotic pet owners as trade outpaces legislation

Gerald Flynn, Nehru Pry 7 Mar 2024
Dholes (Cuon alpinus) hunting a spotted deer in Tadoba Andhari Tiger Reserve, Maharashtra, India.

Dholes latest wild canids likely making comeback in Nepal, study shows

Abhaya Raj Joshi 27 Feb 2024
African elephants

Cornell receives $35m gift for research at nexus of wildlife and health

Carolyn Cowan 9 Feb 2024

In Argentina, scientists scramble to study seal colonies hit hard by avian flu

Maxwell Radwin 31 Jan 2024
Katana Ngala in a boat during a coral restoration project.

‘All will be well’: Q&A with Kenyan fisher turned coral gardener Katana Ngala

Anthony Langat 17 Aug 2023

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