Corrie
Brown, DVM, PhD, Professor and Coordinator of International Activities,
University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA Corrie
Brown, DVM, PhD, Professor and Coordinator of International Activities,
University of Georgia, Athens, GA, 30602, USA
The last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in infectious disease outbreaks in wildlife. Virtually all of these diseases can be classified as “emerging” and the reasons for their emergence all relate to anthropogenic environmental change and trends toward globalization. Increased human population pressures have caused spillover of infections from domestic to wild animal populations, for example, canine distemper in lions in Africa. Habitat stress and resulting migration of species to new locations has been responsible for wildlife disease outbreaks, including phocine distemper in Europe and Newcastle disease in the U.S. Carriage of pathogens to new locations, a phenomenon termed “pathogen pollution”, has been blamed for the global spread of chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease affecting amphibian populations. The massive die-off of pilchards in Australia and whirling disease of trout in the U.S. both occurred as a result of contaminated materials being transported to disease-free locations. More attention is being paid to wildlife than ever before; sometimes this attention is misguided, and even fosters the creation of disease situations. Winter feeding of deer in the Midwestern United States has resulted in extensive spread of Mycobacterium bovis among deer herds in this region. Similarly, the practice of filling bird feeders for house finches engendered conditions that allowed Mycoplasma gallisepticum to spread rapidly among these song birds along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Globalization trends ensure that international movement of people, animals, and products will continue to increase. Chronic wasting disease, previously thought to be confined to cervids in a small area in the western U.S., has spread to other regions and countries as a result of transportation of captive deer. Taken together, all of these wildlife disease outbreaks present an urgent need for an integrated system of surveillance and control, and a major challenge for the international veterinary community.
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