News

TEDMED is a health-focused iteration of the renowned TED conference, celebrating the ideas behind progress in health and medicine through a program called The Hive. Diversity and multi-disciplinary collaboration are at the core of TEDMED's mission to "catalyze a healthier world."

Just last year, OHI Executive Director Jonna Mazet was nominated as a 2018 TEDMED Hive Innovator for her work as anchor author of the Global Virome Project. Her talk was entitled "What if we could immunize the world against pandemics?" 

Two isolated mountain lion populations in Southern California’s Santa Ana and Santa Monica Mountains are at risk of local extinction, perhaps as soon as within 50 years, according to a study published in the journal Ecological Applications.

The study showed the extinction risk is due to low genetic diversity and mortality that affects the stability of the population. Mountain lion mortality is often caused by humans, but can also result from changes in the environment, such as wildfire and fluctuations in prey density.

Predicting the emergence of highly pathogenic viruses in animals and preventing them from spilling over to humans is the goal of a multi-million-dollar cooperative agreement from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) with collaborating researchers at the University of California, Davis; the University of Idaho; and Plymouth University in England.

The SeaDoc Society invites viewers to explore the magnificent wildlife of the Pacific Northwest in a new adventure series called Salish Sea Wild, debuting Jan. 10. Salish Sea Wild is hosted by SeaDoc Science Director Joe Gaydos and will feature a new species or topic each month, starting with Steller sea lions in January.

After collecting data and comparing it with every known mammal and bird species on Earth, scientists from the University of California, Davis, have identified wildlife species that are the most likely to host flaviviruses such as Zika, West Nile, dengue and yellow fever. Flaviviruses are known to cause major epidemics and widespread illness and death throughout the world.

Scientists have discovered Marburg virus in fruit bats in Sierra Leone. This is the first time the deadly virus has been found in West Africa. Five Egyptian rousette fruit bats tested positive for active Marburg virus infection. Scientists caught the bats separately in three health districts: Moyamba, Koinadugu and Kono.

Wildlife veterinarians at the Hummingbird Health and Conservation Program in the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine recently published a study describing a new system to track hummingbirds visiting feeders in urban gardens.

In 2018, the southern resident killer whale population in the Pacific Northwest’s Salish Sea was at its lowest ever. The world watched in September as an orca named Scarlet, or J50, wasted away and died, leaving just 74 of her kind left. Some wondered if this was “What extinction looks like.”