Deady Plague Could Devastate US Rabbit Population: RHDV, Rabbit Hemorrhagic Disease Virus
"The deadly plague that could devastate the US rabbit population." Scientists aren’t sure they can mitigate the spread of the virus, which causes fevers, internal bleeding and liver failure. By Katharine Gammon, The Guardian, July 15, 2020.
In early March, Gary Roemer was walking in the hills of New Mexico with his dog, Duke. Usually Duke would chase rabbits, but never catch them. This time, though, he brought back a jackrabbit. Roemer, a wildlife biologist with the University of New Mexico in Las Cruces, initially thought the rabbit was just feeble. But the next day he found a fresh carcass with grisly conditions: it was bleeding from the nose and the anus. “That’s when I thought: this is pretty unusual,” Roemer says. He froze the carcass to examine later, and soon received an email from a colleague with similar descriptions of more dead bunnies. The culprit was discovered to be rabbit hemorrhagic disease, a virus so deadly it has been likened to a plague.
The disease, which has a mortality rate as high as 70%, had previously devastated rabbit and hare populations in China, Europe and Australia, first reaching domestic rabbits in the United States in 2018. But in the last few months it has leapt into wild rabbit populations for the first time, hitting seven states. If left unchecked, it could be dire not only for rabbits but for the numerous animals who depend on them for food. Now scientists are scrambling to figure out how, or even if, it can be stopped. “This is a pretty big deal from a wildlife management perspective,” says Bryan Richards, Emerging Disease Coordinator, USGS National Wildlife Health Center. “The virus is in a pretty vast area, and we don’t have any tools to use to mitigate the spread or stop it once it’s out in free-ranging populations.”
What is RHDV? Rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) has been around since the 1980s, when it hit domesticated rabbit populations in China and Europe, eventually killing 140 million domestic rabbits in China alone. It was also used in Australia as an attempt to control rabbit populations. In 2010 a new form of the virus, RHDV2, emerged in Europe. The USGS has warned that all rabbits, hares and distant endangered relatives called pikas could be susceptible in North America. The virus is incredibly persistent in the wild, studies show. It can survive for months, and carcasses have enough virus to transmit for more than 20 days, meaning anything visiting the carcass (predators, flies) can spread it easily. And it can withstand high heat – it’s still transmissible for several days even in 120F (49C), and can last for three months in dried feces.
“People have learned a lot about transmission of the novel coronavirus recently,” says Hayley Lanier, a mammalogist at the University of Oklahoma. “If you wash your hands well the coronavirus is quite weak. This virus is on the other end of toughness.” The disease only affects lagomorphs: rabbits, hares and their cousins the pikas. There is no evidence that it can spread to other animals or humans. Experts say people should be careful about rabbit shows, farms or other places where many rabbits are crowded together – as they may be spots where the disease is spreading in captive populations. New rabbits should be quarantined for 14 days, and there is no vaccine available to veterinarians in the US or Canada...
Read More, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/15/deadly-plague-us-rabbit-population
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