Here is an article on whether Parvovirus could be responsible for a sudden decline in the Yellowstone wolf population. I wsn't sure how this might be spread, so asked sometime contributor Dr. John Burchard, zoologist and polymath, for his opinion. His answers were, as always, fascinating.
I had said to Reid, who had sent the item:
"Distemper made some awful inroads in lions in East Africa a few years back, definitely from dogs, so spreading zoonoses are possible. The only doubt I had is that I thought Parvovirus (generally written that way AFAIK, not as two words) was spread through infected soil etc. rather than animal- to- animal. So how are the wolves coming in contact?"
" I’ll ask John Burchard--- he knows more than most vets ".
John replied:
"Distemper caught from local dogs is, I believe, also a major, perhaps decisive factor in the decline of Cape hunting dogs (Lycaon pictus) in East Africa, and in the survival problems of the last remnants of the Ethiopian wolf in the Bale
Mountains. Canine distemper virus can infect a very wide range of species - I think it's not even limited to Carnivora. Something very like it was responsible for mass mortality of Harbor Seals in European waters, several years
back.
"Canine parvovirus was a species jump, probably from cats, in 1978 or very shortly before. A panzootic in dogs went round the world in that year; no antibodies to parvovirus have been found in any dog sera collected before 1976.
"The canine parvovirus is VERY resistant in the environment - it can survive for months or perhaps even years outside the host, which is unusual for a virus. That durability is largely responsible for its importance as a pathogen. You can bring it home on your shoes, your clothing, your hands, whatever.
'Given the level of hatred for wolves in the ranching community, it would not altogether astonish me if someone deliberately spread parvovirus among the Yellowstone wolves. Because the virus is so resistant, it would be very easy to do".
I'd hate to believe it, but especially up north, where emotions seem to run higher, I couldn't in honesty rule it out. Not much way to detect it, either. One can only hope the wolves build up antibodies. I'll leave the last word to our friend Vladimir Beregovoy, another scientist and fellow hunter, whose specialty is primitive dog breeds:
"Yes, wolves should be with us, but they should respect people and dogs. Hunt them with staghounds, Tobets, Borzois, etc., but do not exterminate them completely, please! To me, without a wolf wilderness is not real, even woods and fields are not real."
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Just after I was an animal control officer in the mid-seventies, a distemper epidemic among dogs also wiped out all the raccoons in and around Portland, Oregon. A little later it was opposums that were drastically reduced by something -- maybe not distemper and certainly not rabies (their brains are too primitive to be good rabies hosts) but about the same time that parvo made its first appearance.
We officers were given vaccine against rabies but the "experts" said that we were probably exposed to so many things in the course of our work that we should never wear our uniforms home and never give blood.
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