FALSE PASS, Alaska, Sept. 17 (UPI) -- A veterinarian says that more than 250 birds that died in July in the Aleutian Islands were not killed by West Nile or other known viruses.
Dr. Rex Sohn, a wildlife disease specialist for the National Wildlife Health Center in Wisconsin, told the Anchorage Daily News that tests so far give no clues to what caused the die-off.
The bird carcasses washed up on beaches at False Pass in early July. Puffins, kittiwakes, eiders, cormorants and other birds that nest in the eastern Aleutians were found dead.
Sohn said that a bacterium or even an unusual virus could still be identified as the cause of the die-off. But Tammy Shellikoff, a representative of the False Pass Tribal Council, told the newspaper that local residents continued to eat fish and seal and did not get sick.
A similar die-off in 1997 in the Bering Sea has been blamed on unusually warm water flowing from glacial rivers and glaciers. The organisms eaten by seabirds went deeper in search of cold water and the birds starved to death.
