Animal Health Matters

Improving the Health of Wild and Domestic Animals to Enhance Long-Term Development Success in USAID-Assisted Countries

Prepared for U.S.A.I.D.  March 30, 2003
As part of the RFA USAID/G/ENV/ENR 99-01 Technical Application – WCS
By:
The Field Veterinary Program
Wildlife Health Sciences
Wildlife Conservation Society
2300 Southern Blvd.
Bronx, NY  10460

The Wildlife Conservation Society saves wildlife and wild lands. We do so through careful science, international conservation, education, and the management of the world's largest system of urban wildlife parks, led by the flagship Bronx Zoo. Together, these activities change individual attitudes toward nature and help people imagine wildlife and humans coexisting in a sustainable way on both a local and a global scale. WCS is committed to this work because we believe it essential to the integrity of life on earth.

Since 1895, WCS has worked from our Bronx Zoo headquarters to save wildlife and wild lands throughout the world.  We uniquely combine the resources of wildlife parks in New York with field projects around the globe to inspire care for nature, provide leadership in environmental education, and help sustain our planet's biological diversity. Today WCS is at work in 53 nations across Africa, Asia, Latin America and North America, protecting wild landscapes that are home to a vast variety of species from butterflies to tigers.  Our pioneering environmental education programs reach millions locally, nationally and internationally.
 

On the Value of Wildlife Health Surveillance

The globalization cliché that we are all connected should not be dismissed. Scientists warn that vast clouds of dust and pathogens transported across continents may link the future of the Sahel to such costly problems as citrus canker and red tide in Florida. Phytophthora, a family of pathogens responsible for the nineteenth-century Irish potato famine, is reappearing in California as Sudden Oak Death Syndrome thanks to international trade in nursery plants. Other invasive plants and animals transported through trade threaten the $8 billion restoration of the Everglades ecosystem. Cruise ships around the world flush ballast water with unknown ‘hitchhiker’ organisms that can cross national borders without approval or known impact.  Field conservationists today provide a biodiversity surveillance system essential to protecting a changing and highly connected Earth and its inhabitants. If it had not been for the scientific wildlife surveillance capability at the Bronx Zoo, for example, the recent outbreak of the West Nile virus in the United States would have escaped early detection and correct diagnosis. The same conservation surveillance capability will likely provide any signals that chronic wasting disease among elk and deer or brucellosis in bison might jump to beef cattle, and in general provide an early warning system to catch future crossings of the wildlife-human disease frontier.

-Dr. Steven Sanderson, President and CEO, the Wildlife Conservation Society. “The Future of Conservation,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 81 (5), September / October 2002.

Different Land Uses, Common Ground

Despite the contrasting perspectives of animal agriculture and wildlife conservation groups on some health issues, it must be stressed here that there is substantial common ground. To a great extent, many of the same people are involved in both activities and have understanding from both sides of controversial issues. Animal agriculturists and wildlife managers understand the concept and value of population health management as opposed to individual animal treatment, and the concern for foreign animal disease introduction is mutual. Additionally, both groups are competing against a ‘tide of humanity’ as human populations increase demand for land and water resources, and there is concern regarding the animal rights movement directed against consumptive use of either wild or domestic animals.  Lastly, because the land base for much of wildlife production is private land, and much of private land is used for animal agriculture, saving farming enterprises is beneficial to wildlife…. it is important for all to view the transmission of diseases between domestic animals and wildlife as a “two-way street” where organisms have the potential to move in either direction. Thus, the goal should be to develop programs and policies that can protect and sustain all interests.

-Dr. Victor F. Nettles, Director Emeritus- Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, The University of Georgia. “Wildlife-Livestock Disease Interactions,” United States Animal Health Association Newsletter,  vol. 28 (5), October 2001.

Table of Contents

Click on a section topic below to view it, or download the entiredocument as a pdf (3.1 MB).

Executive Synopsis

Introduction

Selected Examples of Animal Health Issues of Importance in North America

Applying the Lessons Learned at Home to Foreign Assistance Programs

Wildlife Health Hotspots- a WCS perspective
      Mongolia
       Bolivia
       Argentina
       Congo Basin
       Tanzania
       Southern Africa
 
The Pilanesburg Resolution

Checklist for Mitigating Wildlife Health Impacts in USAID-Assisted Projects

Appendices

IUCN/SSC Guidelines for Re-Introductions

IUCN Guidelines for the Prevention of Biodiversity Loss Caused By Alien Invasive Species

Additional Literature References

Additional Web Resources