Special | Regional Hunting Federation
The regional government develops an operation to control and monitor the disease, which includes the sighting and killing of infected animals
For the Barbary sheep, sarcoptic mange is the most serious disease it can suffer. In fact, this reality is public and notorious in the Sierra Espuña Natural Park, where there are populations with affected specimens, which, in turn, are strongly spreading this pathology throughout the territory. Between September and December 2021, a total of fourteen sick animals were killed in this area by Environment agents, who are currently paying special attention to the problem of mange to stop its spread.
The last census carried out in the Region of Murcia on the so-called Atlas mouflon estimates its population between 600 and 700 specimens, after several thousand of them have been killed in recent years by the Environment after verifying that the accumulated incidence had fired.
Precisely, the fact that up to 70% or 80% of the barnacles have been killed in the natural park and its surroundings, as estimated by this Ministry, now constitutes a tourniquet to slow down the spread of scabies, since a higher density of this species would probably cause the disease to spread piecemeal.
In this sense, the Hunting Federation of the Region of Murcia (FCRM) has always shown its participatory spirit in the most suitable hunting management. Likewise, he first proposed the use of treatment with drugs from the avermectin group, although their effectiveness would not save advanced-stage cases.
In private preserves, owners are authorized to shoot down sick specimens to prevent the spread of the mite. In the event of a pest situation being decreed in a preserve, the environmental agents could act ex officio for health reasons.
mating season
Caused by a mite, scabies is a very contagious and lethal disease, which, as a general rule, ends the life of the animal, wreaking real havoc on the populations of wild ungulates (barbary sheep and ibex). Its expansion is mainly carried out by infected males during territorial movements prior to the mating season and sexual activity.
Treatment with drugs from the avermectin group would also be effective, except for advanced-stage cases.
The presence of scabies in Sierra Espuña was considered extinct until, about a year ago, sick sheep were detected, with special incidence in the area of Sierra de Pedro Ponce and La Selva. The suspicion is that the disease has returned through the ibex. Apart from the natural park, the pathology is present in other parts of the Region, such as Moratalla (where the disease has been endemic for many years), Caravaca de la Cruz, Lorca (in Zarcilla de Ramos) and Mula. The regional federation indicates that the scabies disease experiences a rebound in cases from 2016, curiously coinciding with the declaration of Temporary Hunting Emergency in different municipalities of Andalusia.
Since 2017, the regional Administration has developed a scabies monitoring and control operation, consisting of an alert network that is activated by the sighting of infected animals and their selective killing.
The first cases registered in the natural park date back to the 90s
In Sierra Espuña, the first cases of sarcoptic mange in Barbary sheep populations were recorded in August 1991. The following year, the Department of Animal Pathology of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine and the Murcia Wildlife Recovery Center analyzed the carcasses found in the natural park and diagnosed the mite (‘Sarcoptes scabiei’). Among the epidemiological factors that triggered the appearance of this disease in this environmental enclave, an excessive population stands out at the limit of the habitat’s carrying capacity (it should be remembered that the species was introduced for hunting purposes in the well-known Sierra Espuña massif in the the 1970s), the physiological weakening of the specimens and the presence of herds of domestic ruminants that are not health-controlled and infested with scabies. Precisely, in 1992, there was a scabies epidemic from which only a hundred of the more than 2,000 specimens survived, and they had to be captured and treated with ivermectin.
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