Vancouver Island rises abruptly out of the Pacific, a green seductress tempting nature lovers with long, sandy curves and the ocean shimmering at her hemline.
But word has spread that something sinister grows here. Invisible to the naked eye, it lives on the trees, in the soil, the water and, at times, dances in mid-air.
It has struck islanders in unprecedented numbers over the past eight years, infecting those who have walked in the woods or done nothing riskier than breathe.
Where has it come from?
It was supposed to be a native of the tropics and subtropics, at home in Australia's wilderness or the jungles of Papua New Guinea. No medical book had ever described its presence north of California. Some guessed it came to B.
C. by way of an imported eucalyptus tree, or blew in on the warm Pacific wind of the Pineapple Express. Whatever it was, health authorities initially took the outbreak of Cryptococcus gattii for a blip that would quickly wither.
They were wrong. The life-threatening tropical fungus has entrenched itself on Vancouver Island's east coast, sickening humans and animals -- cats, dogs, pet birds, llamas, ferrets, horses and the prized Dall's porpoise. For a pathogen never expected in this corner of the world, the C.
gattii strain in B.C. is flourishing at a rate at least 30 times more infectious than any other on the planet.
For five years, B.C. experts, in collaboration with scientists from Australia, the United States and the Netherlands, have been investigating its surprising emergence on Vancouver Island, uncovering intriguing clues along the way.
Strains similar to the one behind the B.C. outbreak have been spotted before -- on trees in Brazil, in a wasp's nest in Uruguay and a sick goat in Aruba.
Still, no one can say exactly where the Vancouver Island fungus came from, or how. But what they do say is that climate change likely plays a lead role in the C. gattii story -- that a string of mild, wet winters and warm, dry summers set the stage for its disturbing debut.
People talk about climate change issues in regard to air quality, but we are seeing the emergence of fatal diseases in places we didn't see them before, said Pamela Kibsey, medical director of microbiology at the Vancouver Island Health Authority. It's the best explanation we have as to why this fungus has suddenly become endemic on the island.
Scientists have long warned that global warming could have a profound impact on human health.
Experts forecast increased deaths due to storms, floods and droughts, spikes in asthma and allergies as air quality deteriorates, the resurgence of old pathogens and the emergence of new ones.
Many projected health risks have already spread beyond the hypothetical. Europe's 2003 heat wave that melted 10 per cent of the Alpine glacier mass, for example, is estimated to have killed 21,000 to 35,000 people in five countries.
Illnesses carried by insects and rodents are not only on the rise, but popping up in new corners of the world as tropical diseases shift northward. Malaria and encephalitis have emerged in Turkey and Azerbaijan. Mosquitoes that carry dengue fever have been found at stunning new heights of about 2,000 metres above sea level in Mexico and in the Andes Mountains of South America.
North America has suffered the emergence of hantavirus in 1993, the expanding terrain of ticks that ferry Lyme disease and, in 1999, the arrival of the West Nile virus.
But increasingly scientists also see fungi as a harbinger of the health risks ahead. A kingdom of mushrooms, moulds and brewer's yeast might seem to proffer nothing more frightening than athlete's foot, but experts note that it is a fungus that has wiped out more than 60 amphibian species.
The premise of global climate change is that it increases or expands the niche for the fungus, said Joseph Heitman, director of the Center for Microbial Pathogenesis at Duke University.
The unglamorous kingdom of multisyllabic microbes was once classified as plants, but fungi are now considered organisms in their own class, with the ability to morph, adapt and migrate. Several new species have been identified in Europe in the past 30 years, and those that cause disease are turning up in troubling numbers.
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