08.08.2012

The Department of Natural Resources suspects the Newcastle disease is responsible in the deaths of hundreds of birds on Pigeon Lake in west-central Minnesota and on Minnesota Lake in southern Minnesota. The DNR says around 700 cormorants, 100 pelicans and some gulls, herons and egrets have been found sick and dead at Pigeon Lake, near Litchfield, alone.
Additional bird die-offs have been reported this summer on Leech Lake, Lake Vermilion and the Ontario, Canada, side of Rainy Lake. Test results are pending.
Newcastle outbreaks in 2008 and 2010 killed several thousand birds across Minnesota. In 1992, an estimated 35,000 cormorants died across the Great Lakes, upper Midwest and Canada.