Doesn't mange usually crop up with over-population? If so, starvation will probably kill them first......
Don't know about the relationship between mange and over population. The pack near our camp was hit by it about 10 years ago.
All diseases that are contagious, "crop up" when populations become large (or dense). Mange, plague, blue-tongue, white-nose fungus, CWD, etc. all have dynamics that are dependent on the densities of their hosts.
Anything that acts to concentrate animals - like water in a drought, or feeders, etc, act to increase the prevalence of contagious diseases has the effect of increasing densities, and hence disease transmission.
It's all part of the mathematics. And part of that mathematics is that it is very very unlikely that a disease that specializes on one or a very few species will be able to drive that species to extinction.
