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Alligator farms breed West Nile virus 

By DAVID WAHLBERG 
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

Hundreds of baby alligators raised at farms in Georgia, Florida,
Louisiana and Idaho have died from West Nile virus, prompting
the discovery that the swamp dwellers are the first animals
other than birds known to be capable of transmitting the disease
to people through mosquitoes.

The first reported deaths came a year ago at a Central Florida
farm where about 300 young alligators raised for their meat and
hides suddenly began quivering and circling in their pens before
succumbing. More than 1,000 alligators at a farm in South
Georgia were fatally stricken shortly afterward, and 1,200
alligators at four farms in Louisiana died in a similar manner
this past summer.

An additional 300 alligators died in September at a farm in
Idaho, where officials this month announced the state's first
human case of West Nile -- in a farmworker who had cut open some
of the dead animals.

...Alligators could also be affecting the human West Nile toll
by acting as reservoirs for the virus, scientists have only
recently learned. Nearly 8,500 people have contracted West Nile
in the United States this year, and 189 have died.

Tests this summer by the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention showed that alligators can harbor enough
of the virus to easily infect mosquitoes that bite them,
enabling mosquitoes to spread the disease to humans and other
species. Until now, that distinction had been held only by
crows, blue jays, magpies and a few other birds. Other animals
that can be infected -- such as horses, dogs and pigs -- don't
carry enough virus to transfer it to most mosquitoes.

...."The bird-mosquito cycle is still the major contributor to
West Nile in the environment," Bunning said. "But alligators
could serve as an incubator."

Researchers aren't sure how the alligators on farms have been
infected, and little is known about how many wild alligators
carry the virus. The problem has surfaced so recently,
scientists are still scrambling to measure its scope.....
In the only U.S. study so far of West Nile in wild alligators, a
University of Florida veterinarian found the virus in four of
301 wild alligators he tested last April.....
Kobi Kagan, who runs Clabrook Farm in Christmas, Fla., did come
forward last year after he lost about 300 alligators out of the
10,000 reptiles on his farm. Half of Kagan's dead alligators
were foot-long hatchlings; the others were a year old and about
3 feet long.....At the Georgia farm where more than 1,000
alligators died late last year -- which officials won't identify
-- a subsequent investigation found evidence of West Nile the
year before.

About 250 alligators died at the farm in late 2001. Researchers
at the University of Georgia, Tifton, were consulted and four of
the reptiles were tested for several bacteria and viruses, but
not for West Nile. But a year later, when more than 1,000
alligators died, the UGA lab tested three of those for West
Nile, and each test was positive.

Those findings prompted the lab to go back and test samples from
the four 2001 alligators for West Nile. Only one was positive;
lab researchers say poor tissue samples, not necessarily an
absence of the virus, might explain the three negative results.

In both years, the UGA lab determined, the youngest alligators
at the Georgia farm died directly from West Nile, while the
older ones -- their immune systems suppressed by West Nile --
succumbed to bacterial infections, according to Debra Miller, a
veterinary pathologist at UGA, Tifton.....

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