Mold Mystery Surrounds SF Bird Deaths

[Guest guest]

if it can kill birds it can kill us.......

 

Mold Mystery Surrounds SF Bird Deaths

http://www.baycitizen.org/wildlife/story/mold-mystery-surrounds-sf-bird-deaths/

Investigation blames rash of gull deaths on deadly mold, but bird

rescuers dispute the results

By: Upton

Western gulls have been dying at an alarming rate

over the past decade at San Francisco’s industrial Pier 94, and preliminary

results of a state investigation that found deadly mold inside the bird’s

lungs

are only deepening the mystery surrounding the carnage.

Bird rescuers who recover sick and dying gulls every other day or so from a

small industrial patch of waterfront land have long blamed a Darling

International-run rendering operation for the deaths.

But, in new findings that are disputed by the bird rescuers, a preliminary

California Department of Fish and Game investigation cleared the facility of

responsibility for most of the deaths.

The department found 15 to 20 dead or dying gulls monthly, according to

California Fish and Game Warden O’Brien. It performed autopsies on a

number of dead gulls and found that growing inside their lungs was a mold called

aspergillus, which suffocated the birds.

The source of the mold, which occurs naturally at lower concentrations,

remains under investigation.

O'Brien told the San Francisco Commission of Animal Control and Welfare

Thursday that the mold is suspected of coming from one of the many industrial

operations in the vicinity of Pier 94. The wide territory covered by western

gulls, which nest at Alcatraz and other shoreline areas and famously flock to

AT & T Park during the bottom of ninth innings, makes it difficult to locate

the source of the mold.

A recycling sorting operation operated nearby by Recology and dirt-hauling

business Waste Solutions Group were named in a San Francisco Examiner report as

potential sources of the mold. O’Brien said Thursday that other operations in

the area are also being investigated.

The birds are likely dying because they are eating or inhaling the mold in

unnatural quantities, according to O’Brien.

“It seems like for all the birds coming back with aspergillus, it’s all in

their respiratory tracts,†said O’Brien.

Officials at Recology and Waste Solutions Group said they were

surprised by the findings and said they doubted that their operations were to

blame.

[Guest guest]

We had a similar story here in our area a few years ago. Hundreds of ducks

were dying along the water by the Chesapeake Bay. They found they were

dying from moldy bread people were throwing to them. It made the front page of

the local paper and it is not forbidden to feed the ducks. Just across the

river a few miles is a school that sickened me and another teacher and is

STILL open. The problem there never made the paper just swept under the rug

and kept as quiet as possible!!! I LOVE animals but it's amazing how they

make the news and humans are treated as lepers!!!!

Mold Mystery Surrounds SF Bird Deaths

_http://www.baycitizen.org/wildlife/story/mold-mystery-surrounds-sf-bird-dea

ths/_

(http://www.baycitizen.org/wildlife/story/mold-mystery-surrounds-sf-bird-deaths/\

)

Investigation blames rash of gull deaths on deadly mold, but bird

rescuers dispute the results

By: Upton

Western gulls have been dying at an alarming rate

over the past decade at San Francisco’s industrial Pier 94, and

preliminary

results of a state investigation that found deadly mold inside the bird’s

lungs

are only deepening the mystery surrounding the carnage.