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ur current RSN website was built in 2009. It has served us well to be sure. But twelve years in online technology is roughly equivalent to 4 eternities. The site is straining under the load. The pages load slowly, and the primary functions are so dated that they are nearly impossible to update.
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Marc Ash is the founder and former Executive Director of Truthout, and is now founder and Editor of Reader Supported News.
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A man surrenders to Portland police after reportedly firing several shots from a handgun in the area of Yamhill and 2nd Avenue in downtown Portland Sunday evening. (photo: Jonathan Levinson/OPB)
ar right groups gathered Sunday in Portland for an event they called the “Summer of Love,” even as the rally date was chosen to commemorate an extraordinarily violent clash last summer in the city. The event ended with a roving brawl along busy city streets in the Parkrose neighborhood, and shots being fired in downtown Portland. No one was reported injured in the shooting incident
Anti-fascists and far left demonstrators gathered downtown early in the day to oppose the far right gathering. The two sides eventually clashed in Northeast Portland after remaining separate for hours, leaving a spree of violence that stretched blocks.
After the violence ended in Northeast Portland, a man fired a handgun at what appeared to be a group of anti-fascists downtown. Portland police moved in and arrested 65-year-old Dennis G. Anderson of Gresham. He was charged with unlawful use of a weapon and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Video posted online also appeared to show someone shooting back after the man opened fire. Information was not immediately available on what led to the shooting. Police said witnesses may have removed evidence from the scene before they arrived.
Early in the day, organizers of the far right event announced they were moving their rally from Waterfront Park in downtown to a commercial parking lot in Northeast Portland. Hundreds of people with the anti-fascist group congregated at Waterfront Park, despite the relocation.
Far right activists, meanwhile, set up a stage on a small trailer in the commercial parking lot along Northeast 122nd Avenue.
Photos and videos streamed online showed members of the Proud Boys — a frequently violent far right group — gathering and speaking at the conservative event. Among them was Tusitala “Tiny” Toese, who has been convicted of engaging in violence at protests.
“We’re not going to stand down,” Toese said. He added that his group was “not playing this time,” but said they did not have plans to leave the Northeast Portland location Sunday.
Various speakers on the Proud Boy stage referred to people charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as “political prisoners.” As the demonstration continued, anti-fascists who had been at Waterfront Park began to gather outside the Proud Boys event.
Throughout the day, members of each side exchanged words and debated each other, but no notable violence had taken place for the first few hours of the gatherings. That changed just after 4 p.m., as the Proud Boys and anti-fascists ran along 122nd Avenue, exchanging paint balls and bear mace. Some people in the crowd threw mortar fireworks near a Chevron gas station, which had to close.
Members of the antifascist crowd shouted at local journalists who were following the melee. They then sprayed chemicals and paint at the journalists, and one local freelance photographer was attacked and injured.
Portland police did not show up as the two sides clashed.
Witnesses said the violence began when a white van attempted to pull into the parking lot where the “Summer of Love” event was taking place. Members of the Proud Boys later flipped the van over.
“This van right here that’s on its side tried pulling into the parking lot, and all these Proud Boys gate security started hitting it with bats and busting the windows out,” one witness, who did not want to be identified, told OPB.
The witness said people got out of the van and started to run away as Proud Boys attacked them.
“I saw this dude beating a woman. There was like two ladies that got hit. It was a nightmare, it was fucking terrifying,” they said.
The witness said they have lived in Portland for 15 years, and had been practicing driving in a nearby lot with another person. They decried the lack of police intervention in the violence that unfolded.
“If this was in Laurelhurst, this wouldn’t be happening,” the witness said, referring to a wealthy, inner Portland neighborhood. “They would have shut this shit down already.”
During the clashes, Proud Boys were also captured on video attacking people and vehicles they believed to be with the anti-fascists. After the groups disengaged from each other, Toese and other Proud Boys continued to drive around the Parkrose neighborhood shooting paintballs at people.
The Portland Police Bureau has frequently cited staffing shortages as a reason larger contingents of officers cannot separate groups that have historically engaged in political violence.
“The Portland Police Bureau is prepared to monitor this event and may make arrests for crimes when resources allow. That does not always happen in the moment,” the bureau said in a written statement Friday. “Just because arrests are not made at the scene, when tensions are high, does not mean that people are not being charged with crimes later.”
Speaking at a “choose love” online event Friday, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and other metro area leaders broadly condemned the political violence that has become routine in Portland.
Asked if unchecked political violence is inevitable, Wheeler said there are discussions online suggesting people planned to come to Portland on Sunday specifically to get into fights.
“We’re telling them, ‘Hell no,’” Wheeler said. “If they come here, if they engage in that type of activity, we’re going to do the best we can, with the resources we have available, to hold people accountable.”
Wheeler’s spokesperson, Sara Morrissey, said the mayor was aware of the clashes and that officers were within minutes of the clashes.
“Had the situation worsened, police would have taken action immediately,” Morrissey said. “Instead, they will be conducting follow up investigations, making arrests and forwarding cases to the Multnomah County District Attorney for prosecution.”
Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, called Sunday’s events “deeply disturbing.” The group, which tracks right wing extremism, characterized the violence as predictable to those who had tracked the lead up to the demonstrations.
“The idea that Portland, or any city, can single handedly defeat white nationalism is a fallacy. This incident needs to be a wake-up call for elected leaders at every level,” Ward said in a written statement. “This is a national problem that demands national resources. Anti-democratic violence is a threat that strikes at the heart of who we are as a country. It’s time to act like it.”
Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) stands near the first home she was evicted from in St. Louis and recounts her time as a young unhoused mother of two. (photo: Joe Martinez/WP)
Not because Republicans keep attacking her over it and not because it makes so many of her Democratic colleagues uncomfortable.
To hear her tell it, the controversy over the phrase is less about whether it accurately conveys the policing policies she and her allies are pursuing and more about creating a distraction from the inaction over police violence against communities of color.
“I’m not going to shy away from ‘defund the police.’ Listen to the message of what we’re saying. I’m going to keep pushing you until you deal with the fact that we are dying. I don’t care if you don’t like the words. How much more should you not like the fact that Black folks in this community are dying at the rates that we’re dying at the hands of police?” she said while giving a reporter a tour of her district. “No one is dealing with it. So, because they left that piece for me, this is still there, I have to attack it as hard and as fast as I can.”
For the record, she says the point of the “defund the police” movement she supports is not to zero out law enforcement budgets, but to move some funds to social services programs that supporters argue would do more to help poor communities reduce crime than having more officers or tactical equipment.
“You call 911, they will still be the same as what it is now,” said Bush (Mo.), a freshman lawmaker. “If you have violence happening and you call the police, they will still show up.”
Republicans have been thrilled by her continued defense of the phrase, including earlier this month during a round of interviews to discuss her effort to extend a moratorium on evictions. And many of her Democratic colleagues who believe the slogan was effectively weaponized against them in the 2020 election worry it could be again as the party faces the uphill challenge of maintaining control of the House in 2022.
“‘Defund police’ is a phrase that I wish had never been uttered. But we’ve got to, we’ve got to do a better job of talking about what we do want to do,” Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.), who oversaw the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2020 election, said earlier this year amid another political dust-up over the slogan.
The controversy over the defunding movement encapsulates the challenge facing Bush, 45, as she attempts to bring her activist background and style to the legislative realm in service of poor communities, like those found in her St. Louis-based district, which she says Congress has long neglected or actively discriminated against for decades.
When should an activist’s zeal give way to a legislator’s finesse or the search for compromise and the best deal possible?
Her recent protest from the Capitol steps of the Biden administration’s decision to allow a pandemic-era eviction moratorium to expire is credited with pressuring the White House to reverse itself and keep the order in place, and it garnered her national attention.
In coming weeks, Bush and a group of her like-minded colleagues who joined Congress in the past two elections — often referred to as “the Squad” — will be tested on whether they can make their mark legislatively by wielding the leverage Democrats’ thin majority gives them on issues such as expanding the social safety [net], putting restrictions on policing, homelessness and domestic violence.
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II (D-Mo.), who has represented Missouri’s 5th Congressional District for almost 20 years, said he grew up in politics at a time when politicians could choose to be an “agitator” activist or a legislator.
He said he’s not sure that’s the case anymore with the rise of politicians like Bush, but that it’s also not that simple a choice.
“She may be able to challenge the axiom that I have been laying out for several decades when teaching young aspiring politicians that you can’t do both, so maybe she’s going to change all of that,” he said in an interview. “But the thing you have to be cautious about is when you are an activist, you’re going to irritate probably a lot of people with whom you need to negotiate to get something done politically. So it is a tight rope to be able to do the agitating, then come inside and negotiate.”
When the House returns to session on Monday, Democrats will begin hammering out the next phase of their agenda by adopting a budget that would clear the way for a package made up of trillions of dollars in new spending for education, day care, health programs and combating climate change. But moderates in the party are already raising concerns about the plan’s price tag, while calling to immediately hold a vote on a Senate-passed infrastructure package that liberals will only support if it is coupled with the social spending package.
While Bush said she is focusing on this potential showdown over the party’s agenda, she is also hoping to advance policies on which her personal story and background as an activist could make her a persuasive messenger.
Days before the eviction moratorium expired, Bush introduced the Unhoused Bill of Rights that proposes curbing homelessness by redirecting $20 billion from the defense budget to fixing dilapidated homes for public housing, creating 24-hour services for the homeless and prioritizing funding for women facing violence or suffering from mental health problems.
She is also hoping to play a role in getting the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized. The once-bipartisan law has drawn objection from Republicans in recent years over policies such as a provision that would prevent abusive partners from obtaining a gun.
Homelessness and domestic violence are issues Bush knows firsthand.
On a hot August day earlier this month, Bush toured her district to build support for her homeless legislation and visited the streets were she slept when she didn’t have a roof over her head and the spots where she was evicted from at three different points in her life.
The first time Bush was evicted was in 1999, one of several times she was homeless. Living in her first apartment and paying rent on time, Bush also found herself staying with a very “abusive” partner. Standing outside rows of two-story brick buildings that she now finds unrecognizable, Bush recalled neighbors hearing her cries through the walls and threatening to call the police if her partner refused to leave her alone.
Looking up to the second-floor window on the left, she recalled being pinned in a chokehold on the room’s floor and seeing her partner’s veins bulging from his facebefore she first lost her hearing and then passed out. After she changed the locks to the apartment, her partner smashed all the windows around the building. Her landlord evicted her.
It was the first time she put her belongings in a trash bag and the first time she realized that evictions cost as much as $2,000 in court and legal fees, which set her back financially.
“Sometimes evictions are because of domestic violence situations,” she said. “I know people get uncomfortable if we’re talking about evictions, but they need to understand the totality of the issue and that we sometimes push women into more abusive situations through evicting them.”
Bush said she has been talking to White House officials about her interest in being involved in the effort to get the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized and described them as receptive to her input.
“They’ve been listening and they do welcome, even though I’m coming from a different place because I’m speaking out of direct experience, they have been very, very receptive — regardless of what the issue is — they’ve been very receptive to why I am taking the stand that I’m taking,” she said.
Sitting outside a McDonald’s at the intersection of Natural Bridge and Kingshighway, Bush recalled another bout of homelessness and how she would often go into the fast-food restaurant to freshen up and clean her two babies’ bottles — the restrooms did not require a key — before heading into work at a day-care center.
Years later, after finding a safe place to live, she decided to pursue a degree in nursing to make more money than she was at her job in day care. But once accepted into a program, Bush said, she had to end her lease early to find cheaper housing to pay for schooling and daily expenses.
Her landlord said the only way she could break her lease was if she signed paperwork to evict herself. She incurred another round of legal fees and moving costs, but she eventually found more affordable housing.
It was these experiences that motivated her to sit in front of the Capitol steps in a lawn chair for four nights and five days at the beginning of the month. Braving some cooler Washington nights, she said, was nothing compared with knowing that 11 million Americans would face eviction and potentially join the roughly 553,750 homeless nationwide unless the moratorium was extended.
“You don’t have to have a big name and a big title. You don’t have to have big money,” Bush said soon after the extension of the moratorium was announced. “But big courage takes you a long way. Big purpose takes you a long way.”
However, she soon found herself in the middle of another controversy when, during a round of interviews about the eviction moratorium, she defended her use of “defund the police” while paying $70,000 on private security she said is needed because of threats made against her.
“Police for me, but none for thee!” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) tweeted. “Dems hypocrisy knows no bounds.”
Bush said she’s having none of it, and that the threats against her are a result of the criticism directed her way by Republicans and conservative media figures.
“Me having private security is a result of their attacks. Can they stop with their rhetoric and their disinformation and all the misogyny? If they stop with all of that and they denounce it, then maybe I wouldn’t need the protection that I have. So this is on them,” she said as two security agents trailed her along the tour through St. Louis.
Bush got involved in politics in 2014, when she became a leader in protests over the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, in Ferguson, Mo., that become one of many flash points in recent years over the use of force against Black people by law enforcement. She was evicted for a third time a year after Brown’s death because she said her neighbors feared that she would bring the protests home with her after they spotted her taking part in a local television interview.
She said she started thinking about whether her representatives were truly representing her community’s interests, which led her to unsuccessfully run for U.S. Senate and then a failed primary challenge against Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), who represented the 1st Congressional District for 20 years after his father did for three decades. She ran again in 2020, defeating Clay in a primary that took place three months after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, which had painful echoes of Brown’s killing.
Many community leaders and voters in her district said they see the upside to Bush’s outspoken approach after years of Clay’s more traditional political style in Washington.
“It seems somewhat shocking when someone such as Congresswoman Bush speaks out in full force about how do we address numerous crises in the country,” said Yusef Scoggin, director of the Office of Family and Community Services for St. Louis County that helps the unhoused. “To the degree that her voice brings consciousness about the unspoken plight of many, I think, is extremely helpful. It’s almost therapeutic, I think, for many in St. Louis who seem to believe that their representatives have not always spoken on their behalf.”
Lauren Boebert. (photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call)
ep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) appears to have failed to properly disclose the true source of nearly $1 million her husband made in the energy sector, in possible violation of House Ethics rules. And even worse: Some of that money appears to have been paid through a company connected directly to Boebert herself.
According to new financial disclosures, Rep. Lauren Boebert’s husband, Jayson Boebert, made $478,386 in 2020 and $460,601 in 2019 for “consulting services” he provided to a company called Terra Energy Productions, AP reported last week. (That name appears to be an error, with the intended company being Houston-based Terra Energy Partners.) A Terra Energy Partners representative confirmed to The Daily Beast on Friday that Jayson Boebert was a contracted shift worker, but was not paid directly. Instead, he was paid through a company called Boebert Consulting.
The Terra Energy representative said Rep. Boebert did not play a role in the company’s business relationship with her husband.
But while Boebert Consulting doesn’t appear in Lauren Boebert’s recent filing, it is listed on the financial forms Boebert filed in January 2020 as a congressional candidate, as “self-emp. income” for “spouse.” The income amount is not listed, and not required by law.
Asked Wednesday to explain her husband’s consulting income source, a Boebert spokesperson told the AP, “Mr. Boebert has worked in energy production for 18 years and has had Boebert Consulting since 2012.”
But the far-right Republican lawmaker may have a problem. Colorado records show that Lauren Boebert’s company, “JLB903 LLC,” took over as Boebert Consulting’s registered agent in 2018, according to a conversion document. The company temporarily reverted back to Jayson in December 2018, but fell under Boebert’s LLC again, according to its 2019 fiscal year report, which Boebert personally filed. The listing hasn’t changed since, according to documents on the Colorado secretary of state’s website.
The report for fiscal year 2019 was filed in April 2020, three months after Boebert submitted her candidate financial disclosure showing her husband earned income through Boebert Consulting. Again, however, that disclosure does not list JBL903 LLC, and Boebert’s recent filing does not list either company.
Neither Boebert Consulting nor JLB903 LLC has filed paperwork since April 2020, according to a business database maintained by the Colorado secretary of state. A registered agent search of Jayson Boebert’s name, including alternate spellings, also returns no results.
Together, the filings indicate that between 2019 and 2020, nearly $1 million passed from Terra Energy to Boebert’s husband, some of it apparently through companies connected to Boebert, which she never reported—one of which she never disclosed at all.
In September 2020, Boebert posted an Instagram photo of herself at a drill site with her husband, who wore a Terra Energy Partners hardhat.
Kedric Payne, senior counsel and director of ethics for the Campaign Legal Center, told The Daily Beast that members are required to disclose all ownership interests and other corporate connections.
“The disclosure laws require lawmakers to reveal the source of all earned income, ownership interests, and certain affiliations with LLCs. Rep. Boebert’s reports raise red flags regarding her compliance with the law,” Payne said. “Voters have a right to know what financial interests their elected officials are beholden to.”
It’s unclear whether the companies have been licensed to do business in the state. JBL903 LLC, despite still being listed as the registered agent for Boebert Consulting, has been delinquent since June 2019, according to Colorado state records. And in June of this year, Boebert Consulting went the same way, listed by the Colorado secretary of state as delinquent for failing to file its periodic report. Delinquent corporations are not authorized to do business in the state, though they may file to “cure” their delinquency and resume operations.
The new information also raises questions about personal conflicts of interest between Boebert, who sits on the House Committee on Natural Resources, and the energy industry she’s charged with regulating.
The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that earlier this month, an affiliate of Terra Energy Partners—the company which contracts Jayson Boebert’s services—requested immediate approval from the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for 17 new gas wells near Boebert’s hometown of Rifle, Colorado.
In February, Boebert introduced legislation to block executive moratoriums on oil and gas drilling leases on public land, which President Joe Biden had enacted weeks prior. (A federal judge struck down that executive order in June.)
“While Joe Biden continues to pander to campaign donors and extremist environmentalists, I’ll continue to fight for jobs and the people of Colorado’s Third District,” Boebert said in announcing her bill.
Boebert did not respond to requests for comment.
A driver holds up a sign supporting a no vote on Prop 22 in Oakland last year. The ruling sets up a fight that could likely end up in California's supreme court. (photo: Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)
Why it matters: California voters approved the measure last November, ensuring gig companies aren't required to make their drivers employees. The victory gave the industry a playbook for facing labor movements nationwide.
Flashback: Gig companies spent over $200 million backing Prop. 22 to enshrine their workers as contractors in exchange for some limited benefits, including funding that can be used for health insurance.
- They were fighting a new state law that changed rules on worker classification.
- Companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash are now exempt from providing health care subsidies and wage floors for hundreds of thousands of drivers.
What they're saying: Prop. 22 "limits the power of a future Legislature to define app-based drivers as workers subject to workers’ compensation law," wrote Alameda County Superior Court Judge Frank Roesch wrote.
- That means the entire measure is unenforceable, Roesch said.
Gig Workers Rising lauded the decision. Prop. 22 "has always been an illegal corporate power grab that not only stole the wages, benefits and rights owed to gig workers but also ended the regulating power of our elected officials, allowing a handful of rogue corporations to continue to act above the law," Shona Clarkson, lead organizer for the advocacy group, said in a statement.
- "This fight is not over until all gig workers receive the living wages, benefits and voice on the job they have earned."
The other side: "We believe the judge made a serious error by ignoring a century’s worth of case law requiring the courts to guard the voters’ right of initiative," Geoff Vetter, a spokesperson for the Protect App-Based Drivers & Services Coalition, said in a statement.
- "This outrageous decision is an affront to the overwhelming majority of California voters who passed Prop. 22," Vetter added, noting they plan to file an immediate appeal.
Our thought bubble, via Axios' Kia Kokalitcheva: Given how dependent the companies’ business models are on Prop. 22 — and how much money they spent on the ballot measure — they’ll surely fight this ruling as long as they can.
The big picture: Uber and Lyft, among others, rolled out the first of the new benefits they'd promised last December.
US marines at Kabul's international airport. The exchange of fire took place at just after 7am Kabul time at the north gate of the airfield. (photo: Sgt Samuel Ruiz/US Marine Corps/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock)
Citing officials from Germany's military, Reuters reports that the incident occurred near the Kabul airport's north gate when Afghan guards exchanged gunfire with unidentified gunmen.
Both U.S. and German forces were also involved in the exchange of gunfire and three other Afghan soldiers are reportedly being treated at a field hospital near the airport.
Roughly 600 former Afghan government soldiers are assisting U.S. forces at the airport. NATO sources told Reuters that the situation is now under control.
The Hill has reached out to the German Federal Ministry of Defense for further comment.
Evacuation operations out of Kabul are ongoing, with thousands of Afghans, U.S. citizens and U.S. military allies seeking escape from the country. Taliban forces stationed outside the airport are reportedly attempting to establish order, using batons and firing shots into the air to forces people into lines.
On Sunday, the British military reported that at least seven Afghans were killed in the crowds near the Kabul airport.
"Conditions on the ground remain extremely challenging but we are doing everything we can to manage the situation as safely and securely as possible," the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense said in a statement.
A deadline of August 31 has been set for U.S. evacuation operations. However, President Biden on Sunday left open the possibility of extending this deadline.
"Our hope is we will not have to extend. But there are going to be discussions, I suspect, on how far along we are in the process," he said during an address.
Wild koalas are on track to begin receiving a vaccine for chlamydia within the next couple years. (photo: Ted Lester/Flickr)
or more than a year, the world has closely followed the development, approval and deployment of various coronavirus vaccines that could bring an end to the global pandemic, debating every side effect and hurdle. But vaccines aren’t only used to spare humans from the ravages of disease; increasingly, they’re being used to conserve wild species threatened with extinction.
Humans vaccinate wildlife for a number of reasons, but most hinge on human health and the protection of livestock. Raccoons are vaccinated for rabies, white-tailed deer for tuberculosis, and wild boar for swine fever. But such immunization campaigns aren’t designed to save wildlife — they’re designed to save us.
That’s starting to change. Today, with environmental threats mounting, there is growing acceptance of the need to vaccinate wild animals to help save them from extinction. In 2015, the Wildlife Conservation Society along with several academic institutions convened the first “Vaccines for Conservation” international meeting in New York City to push for vaccinating threatened carnivores against canine distemper. But that’s just one among many initiatives under consideration by conservationists.
In the United States, scientists have developed an oral vaccine for prairie dogs, hidden in peanut-butter-flavored bait, to prevent plague, caused by the Yersinia pestis bacterium. Prairie dogs are the key prey species of endangered black-footed ferrets (Mustela nigripes).
Researchers are also racing to develop a vaccine for white-nose syndrome, caused by the Pseudogymnoascus destructans fungus, in hibernating bats. The fungus has killed millions of bats in North America and threatens some species with extinction. Scientists aspire to apply the vaccine by spraying it onto bats at roosting sites; when the bats groom themselves, they should ingest the vaccine.
The white-nose vaccine highlights just how difficult it can be to vaccinate wild animals. Entire bat or prairie dog populations can’t simply be captured and given a jab. And within some species, vaccines don’t seem to be very effective. For example, there’s little evidence that amphibians can acquire resistance to the devastating pathogenic chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis through immunization. In recent studies, scientists at the University of South Florida were able to provoke an immune response to the fungus in Cuban tree frogs (Osteopilus septentrionalis), but they’ve yet to replicate the results with the critically endangered Panamanian golden frog (Atelopus zeteki).
Other vaccines, though, are advancing more quickly.
Chlamydia down under
For more than a decade, Peter Timms, a microbiologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia, has been working on a chlamydia vaccine for koalas (Phascolarctos cinereus).
Chlamydia is a sexually transmitted disease that affects the koala’s reproductive system. It causes scarring and massive cysts in the reproductive tract, often leading to infertility. It can also lead to conjunctivitis in the animal’s eyes, causing blindness.
“In many areas, chlamydia is the single threat to koalas and can lead to a reduction of 50% in numbers,” Timms says.
Infected koalas are often treated with antibiotics, but at least one in three don’t survive treatment.
The marsupials, Timms says, are dependent on their gut microbiome. “Because koalas eat a diet — eucalyptus leaves — that is high in toxins, the koala liver is designed to detoxify those toxins. So, when you give them antibiotics, they also try to break it down and detoxify it.” This means veterinarians need to treat the animals for far longer — two weeks to a month — with daily antibiotics, but this much medicine also ultimately destroys their gut flora.
Instead of treating sick koalas, Timms says he hopes to prevent the disease from taking hold.
“The hardest [thing to develop] is a vaccine that prevents them from getting infected in the first place,” he says.
He and his colleagues have been conducting trials of an injectable vaccine on captive and wild koalas for years. These trials have shown that not only are infection levels reduced in vaccinated koalas, but that for already infected individuals, the progression to disease, when a koala would begin to exhibit symptoms, is significantly reduced. Moreover, they found that in at least 80% of koalas with eye disease, vaccination was able to reverse the disease’s effects.
With a safe and effective vaccine in hand, the next hurdle will be its deployment.
“Koalas are a challenge,” Timms says. “Unlike other species, such as big cats and bears that are radio-collared, most koalas are not closely monitored … it’s a more wild species from that perspective.”
Timms says it makes sense to start vaccinating individuals brought into wildlife hospitals; around 700 or 800 koalas arrive every year just at the Australia Zoo Wildlife Hospital in Queensland. It might also be feasible to vaccinate populations of koalas impacted by road development.
“In those cases, the animals are being closely monitored and it might be possible to mount a vaccination program,” he says.
The koala chlamydia vaccine is currently in the middle of the regulatory approval phase, and Timms says he’s hopeful that within one to two years they can begin wide-scale immunization of koalas.
The Australian government, he adds, has traditionally focused on habitat protection to conserve koalas, “but we’re getting to a stage that disease management should be an integral part of broader conservation management.”
Not just for dogs
Vaccination of wild animals for conservation has not always been without controversy.
In the early 1990s, efforts to inoculate African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) against rabies were falsely implicated in their extinction from the Serengeti in Tanzania. Researchers theorized that the darting of wild dogs and invasive handling techniques may have increased their stress hormones, compromising their immunity and reactivating latent forms of the rabies virus in their bodies. Another study around the same time suggested that a modified-live canine distemper vaccine may have been responsible for killing four African wild dog puppies.
Despite the fact that research since then has disproved those theories, “many authorities over the world will not consider vaccinating threatened wild carnivores,” says Martin Gilbert, a veterinary scientist at Cornell University in the U.S. Rather, in cases where a wild animal is threatened by a disease, environmental authorities often elect to vaccinate the perceived sources of those viruses, such as stray dogs or livestock, to reduce transmission, instead of the wild animal itself.
This was the idea first proposed to protect the Siberian or Amur tiger (Panthera tigris) from canine distemper virus, which showed up in the early 2000s. Though the disease, which plagues the respiratory system and, later, the brain, appeared to affect only two tiger populations in Siberia, wildlife managers grew greatly concerned; in 1994, an outbreak of CDV killed roughly one-third of the Serengeti’s lion population.
Gilbert found that if small tiger populations, like the one in southwest Primorski, are exposed to even modest levels of CDV, it’s 65% more likely the population will go extinct within 50 years.
“Initially, we thought this was going to be a dog issue — tigers eat dogs regularly,” Gilbert says of the origin of the virus. Veterinarians, therefore, assumed that vaccinating domestic dogs in Siberian villages and controlling their movement would mitigate the threat to wild tigers. But Gilbert’s latest research reveals that, surprisingly, dogs aren’t the reservoir population of canine distemper in Siberia. Instead, when Gilbert and his colleagues sampled wildlife carcasses found in fur traps and along roadsides, they found high levels of CDV antibodies in the brain tissue of everything from raccoon dogs (Nyctereutes procyonoides) to badgers (Meles leucurus) to Siberian weasels (Mustela sibirica).
Canine distemper is likely transmitted to tigers from their prey, Gilbert says. “In late summers, tigers will sit along badger runs and kind of pop them like candy as they come running along their trails through the forest.” Such findings indicate that “the only feasible approach to mitigating the impact of distemper on the tigers would be to vaccinate the tigers themselves.”
The logistics are daunting. Many people living in Siberia have never even seen a tiger. And no wild tigers have ever been vaccinated for any disease.
“We’re never going to be able to vaccinate the whole population of tigers,” Gilbert says. But he adds it’s possible inoculation could be done on a passive basis: conservationists could vaccinate tigers captured due to conflicts, or orphaned cubs in rehabilitation. He’s found that if veterinarians were able to vaccinate just two tigers per year, they would reduce the extinction risk by 75% in Russia’s Primorye population.
The other challenge is that there is no dedicated CDV vaccine for big cats. Today, they only exist for ferrets and dogs. To repurpose a vaccine for a different species, clinical trials may need to be conducted anew.
Jabbing penguins
Though scientists have struggled to develop a vaccine for amphibians plagued by chytrid fungus, the jab’s usefulness extends beyond protecting threatened mammals. Yellow-eyed penguins (Megadyptes antipodes), native to New Zealand and considered the world’s most endangered penguin species, have been in sharp decline for the last 20 years.
The birds are dying from avian diphtheria, a bacterial infection that affects the penguins’ upper respiratory tract. Diphtheria primarily impacts chicks, with up to 93% of young yellow-eyed penguins contracting avian diphtheria every year in some northern populations. Nearly three-quarters of them die.
The bacterium infects the tongue and mouth of young chicks, blocking the oral cavity with pus and ulcers.
“They can’t feed properly so they die of malnutrition,” says Vartul Sangal, a molecular scientist at Northumbria University in the U.K. Though avian diphtheria also affects adult penguins, the mortality rate is much lower. The bacterium is likely more effective at killing chicks because they have a less developed immune system, Sangal says.
Eventually, the diphtheria infection can spread to the rest of the penguin’s body, resulting in sepsis.
Sangal and his colleagues recently identified the bacteria strain causing these ravaging infections for the first time. Researchers collected swabs from the mouths of infected penguin chicks and sent these samples to Sangal, who isolated the bacterium in the laboratory and sequenced its genome.
“It was very exciting,” he says. “We also now know the mechanism of how it is causing the infection.” One of the genes, he found, produces a protein that helps the bacterium survive inside the host.
This information, he says, is important for developing a vaccine against the bacterium. If scientists can modify the protein to protect the penguins from infection, they’ll be able to develop a defense.
“We definitely need some intervention,” Sangal says. “The penguins are treated with antibiotics but it doesn’t work very well.”
It’s still not known where the chicks are picking up the disease from in their environment, or how exactly it moves from penguin to penguin.
“It is being spread in the nest, but it could be from the mother to the chicks, or from chick to chick,” Sangal says.
Producing and distributing a vaccine for yellow-eyed penguins remains an uphill battle. Sangal estimates an effective vaccine will take between five and 10 years to develop. First, scientists will need to test it on other birds, such as chickens, to ensure it’s safe for penguins. Then they will need to inject the vaccine into wild penguins, preferably adults. In studies of other avian diseases in chickens, researchers have found it’s possible to vaccinate a mother bird and immunity will transfer her to egg yolks.
Ultimately, there is no silver bullet in wildlife conservation. Effective vaccines, however, can serve as critical weapons in the fight against extinction.
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