>>The wildlife center of Virginia is one of the world's leading teaching and research hospitals for wildlife and conservation medicine, providing state-of-the-art veterinary care for more than 3000 wild animals each year.

The center draws on lessons learned from each patient admitted to teach the world to care about and care for wildlife and the environment.

>>Funding for "Untamed" is made possible by.

(water trickling) (birds chirping) (intense music) >>The study of wildlife disease has taken on greater urgency in the last few years, as we have come to understand the role that wildlife disease plays in the emergence of human disease, and certainly the COVID-19 pandemic is a shocking and recent reminder of this relationship.

The CDC says that about 75% of all emerging human diseases actually do originate in animals and many times wild animals.

Now disease is a normal part of the ecosystem, and it's a normal part of the balance of nature.

The disease outbreaks that affect certain species actually helps control the density of certain species.

And when a population becomes beyond the carrying capacity of its habitat and disease breaks out, it is often the reduction in that population density that will terminate the disease and allow the population to settle in and recover.

But just because disease is natural, and it occurs in a natural setting, doesn't mean that we can sit back and do nothing about emerging diseases.

Because the sad fact is that it is human activity and human influence that has even caused and certainly accelerated the spread of diseases, not just in local populations of wildlife or other animals, but worldwide.

We've got many examples of that.

The spread of chronic wasting disease has taken place across North America at a blinding speed, almost certainly because of human movement of infected deer.

This has been for these captive hunting operations, tall fence hunting or canned hunts, as they are sometimes called.

But also there is an alternative agriculture in production of venison and even and collection and sale of the shed antlers.

Moving these animals around with almost no regulation or certainly inadequate regulation has allowed that disease to move right with it.

White nose syndrome, which is affecting many species of colonial bats in North America is almost certainly introduced by European spelunkers or cave explorers who came to North America to explore our caves, many of which have bad colonies in them, and they brought with them contaminated equipment and clothing and boots and lights that had the spores of the fungus that has now swept at epidemic levels through colonial bat species across North America.

And it is threatening to wipe out certain species because they had no resistance to it.

As we are studying the emergence of disease, we need to do this on a global scale, because today animals, people, disease organisms can go literally from continent to continent in just a few hours.

Disease surveillance is an urgent matter, and what we are doing to the environment through climate change deforestation, habitat manipulation is exacerbating the problem.

We need to remember that environmental health, animal health, and human health are all one health, and the study of emerging disease is a critical step in understanding that relationship.

(gentle music) >>I am Dr. Camille Hopkins, wildlife disease coordinator for the US geological surveys ecosystem's mission area.

I oversee our national portfolio for aquatic and terrestrial wildlife disease.

In that capacity, I oversee our science that occurs at federal science centers, but also USGS scientists that are based at land grant universities, we call those cooperative research units, and these disease ecologists as well as veterinarians, conduct work in Marine, freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems across the nation.

Disease is a deviation from a state of health.

As a disease ecologist, I recognize that there is a balance between the environment, organisms living in the environment and these disease-causing agents.

In addition to traditional pathogens that we consider, like bacteria and viruses, there are prions, which are an alternative state of proteins.

A good example of that on the domestic side being mad cow disease or bovine spongiform encephalopathy.

Another disease-causing agent of concern would be parasites.

A good example of that being plasmodium relictum that causes avian malaria.

That's having an impact on Hawaiian forest birds.

In addition to those, I would also add fungi, which we have seen more emerging in wildlife.

Notably the disease causing agent for white nose syndrome in bats, pseudomonas destructans.

And then finally, I'd like to point out that there are many emerging diseases that we still don't understand what is the causative agent?

What is the etiology behind the disease?

Disease causing agents are definitely part of the biodiversity of this planet.

A good example, being the parasites that exist within the GI gastrointestinal tract of all animals.

Certainly, we do see wildlife living with disease causing agents where there's a balance.

However, there is evidence that anthropogenic effects have led to wildlife disease outbreaks.

In other words, humans have helped to spread diseases that are impacting wildlife.

Globalization unfortunately means that there is an increased likelihood that invasive species, exotic pathogens, could be brought to the United States and expose our wildlife to diseases that they have never been exposed to before.

And we currently, in the US, are investigating two Asian ticks that have been introduced into the United States.

The most well known of the two is the Asian Longhorned tick.

It has been detected on wildlife, but we do not yet understand its role in possibly spreading diseases to deer and other native wildlife Zoonotic diseases are pathogens that are shared between animals and humans.

A good example in North America that most people are familiar with is rabies.

We know that rabies circulates in raccoons, skunks, bats, and that that rabies virus can unfortunately cause fatal disease in humans.

This has been an exciting time over the last couple of decades to see the ability and the power of scientists to harness data, and use statistics and mathematical modeling to understand trends in disease, but also to help with prediction and forecasting of disease outbreaks, as well as identification of areas of high risk for disease.

Notably, this has been done quite well in terms of public health, but we are starting to see that science being used for wildlife.

(uplifting music) >>Treating a disease is different than treating a trauma related problem for a couple of different reasons.

The first reason is that oftentimes patients with trauma, we know exactly what's happened as soon as they come in.

We can see that there's a fracture or we can see that there's a large wound.

When a patient comes in with a disease, we may not know that right away and we have to do different kinds of diagnostics to determine that it's there.

Also, oftentimes patients come in with trauma related illnesses right away.

So it's an acute presentation.

However, patients with disease tend to come in at the chronic stage of their illness.

So they've been battling this on their own for a little while and only when they're weak enough from the disease, do they present to us.

Sometimes that can make it a little more challenging to treat it.

So a wildlife hospital is extremely important in learning about wildlife disease.

We act as a Sentinel for disease.

We might be the very first ones to see a new disease or to see an increase in a disease frequency through our populations of animals.

Additionally, we might have community members call to say that they're seeing something irregular happening in the wildlife around their homes, and we're the ones that they contact about that.

We also participate as a hospital in surveillance studies, where we take samples from patients, usually as simple as a swab, to determine if there's a disease in that patient or in our populations, that helps us know more about the patients that we're treating and prepare for the times ahead.

So we need to know what's going on in our patients to help those individual patients and also to help keep the other patients in our hospitals safe.

So if a patient comes in with a disease like distemper, we need to make sure that we don't get any other patients in the hospital sick from that.

That might mean we need to implement things like foot baths.

And we also have to be careful with wearing gowns or gloves so that we protect animals from the diseases that might be passed.

Additionally, we need to make sure our staff is safe.

A lot of our patients come in with diseases that are doing zoonotic, which means it can be transmitted from an animal to a human.

And I need to keep myself and my staff safe so we can continue to treat animals.

So when we're trying to detect a wildlife disease, there's a few different methods we can use.

One of the things we look at is a blood sample to see if it seems like their inflammatory cells are elevated.

Another thing we can do is take a sample from the patient and look at it under the microscope to see if there are bacteria there.

Sometimes we send off a sample from the patient to a lab to do a test called a PCR, where they detect different viruses in that patient.

One of the diseases that we see here is called snake fungal disease.

This is an emerging infectious disease that we now know is present in at least 23 states, and it seems to spreading across Virginia.

It's caused by a fungus called Ophidiomyces and it's found in the environment around the snakes, but we're not 100% sure about all of the transmission information.

We just know it's around and about.

The way that it presents in snake patients is they get little lesions on their skin.

Sometimes it just looks like they've had an irregular shed.

Sometimes it looks like they've had an abrasion or a little scar.

What we do when they come in is we quarantine them by themselves and we treat them symptomatically for any of those superficial abrasions, and then we also just give them supportive care.

We make sure that they're warm, hydrated and well fed and they tend to recover quite well.

Emerging wildlife diseases are problematic, because they can threaten not just an individual patient, but potentially a whole species.

And the species may not only have that disease as a pressure, they might have to worry about environmental pressures or pollution in their area.

All things that we're thinking about when we think about the whole health of a population, or when we think about the circle of life.

Wildlife disease will likely worsen over time.

As populations become more crowded and habitat size decreases, and then their populations develop a bottleneck in their DNA.

>>Monitoring, researching and combating the emergence of wildlife disease is something that has to take place on a large scale.

Indeed often a global scale.

And it requires the collaboration of state, federal, sometimes international institutions, public and private agencies, and indeed private organizations, wildlife hospitals, like the Wildlife Center of Virginia, or your local wildlife rehabilitation center.

Ultimately by sharing information and sharing what we see, observe, and can document in wildlife health issues, we are better able to develop the strategies and the responses that we need.

(uplifting music) >>My name is Megan Kirschgessner and I'm the wildlife veterinarian for the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources.

I oversee all issues related to animal handling and welfare, animal health and disease and the use of drugs to chemically immobilize wildlife.

DWR staff closely monitors the global spread of emerging diseases that are capable of infecting wildlife.

When a disease is detected within relative proximity to Virginia, DWR staff begins to consider the initiation of plans to reduce the chance of introduction of this disease into the state.

These plans may consist of guidance suggesting the prohibition of importation of live animals or possibly animal carcass parts as well.

These plans will also typically involve a component detailing an educational outreach campaign that makes sure that Virginia citizens are aware of this disease, and also reminds them that their actions matter in regards to keeping diseases out of Virginia.

Field protocols will also be developed to assist staff when responding to disease events that are consistent with emerging wildlife diseases.

We collaborate closely with the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Department of Agriculture and consumer services to investigate trans boundary diseases that cross the interfaces between humans and wildlife and domestic livestock and wildlife.

We also work really closely with the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study at the University of Georgia.

This is a fantastic group that's comprised of various wildlife veterinarians, wildlife disease ecologists, and wildlife pathologists.

Our most important group of stakeholders are Virginia citizens that are hunters, trappers, permitted wildlife rehabilitators, outdoor enthusiasts and wildlife watchers, who keep us informed of potential emerging disease issues, and help us to collect samples for diagnostic testing.

Chronic wasting disease, otherwise known as CWD, is an invariably fatal disease that affects all members of the family cervidae including elk, moose, and deer.

The spread of this disease across the country has been facilitated by the movement of captive cervides from one facility to another.

But spread has certainly been observed in wild populations as well, albeit on a more localized and gradual pace.

Currently, there are six confirmed CWD positive counties in the state of Virginia.

Every year DWR diligently monitors the prevalence trends in these infected populations of deer and also closely tracks the geographic spread of the disease to new areas of Virginia.

Wildlife health professionals have spent decades researching various aspects of chronic wasting disease, including the effects that this disease has on individual deer, how the disease is transmitted from one deer to another.

What the actual infectious agent is that causes this disease.

And finally, whether genetic makeup of individual deer can actually affect resistance to infection.

While we know quite a bit about CWD the biggest questions that remain are what are the potential long-term population level effects that this disease may have on deer?

And is this disease capable of infecting humans or domestic animals?

At this time, the science suggests that CWD is a very host specific disease, meaning it appears to only be able to naturally infect deer, elk and moose.

The science does not support the notion at this time that this disease is able to infect humans or domestic animals with the possible exception of pigs.

Despite this, the CDC still recommends that humans avoid consumption of any venison or meat from a known CWD positive animal.

Wildlife do not exist in a bubble.

More often than not diseases of concern in wildlife are shared with humans, domestic animals and sometimes both.

The health of wildlife, domestic animals and humans is intimately connected to the health of both our natural resources and our environment.

This concept is known as one health.

One health and buys the idea that keeping tabs and maintaining the health of one part of the system helps to maintain and improve the overall wellbeing of the system as a whole.

(uplifting music) >>It's critically important that we understand and research emerging diseases of wildlife over the last 20 or 30 years, we've seen numerous examples of diseases or disease agents that have emerged in wildlife.

Researching emerging diseases of wildlife is important because that provides the data we need to better understand and define those diseases within wild populations.

Research can define the patterns of disease.

So what species are affected or infected?

When are they infected?

Do we have any effects of age or sex?

Do we see annual variation?

How are these disease or disease agents transmitted?

Research can define these things.

Research can also define risk factors.

Risk factors are those factors or attributes that have to do with the disease agent itself, the environment or the host that make a disease or an infection with the disease agent more likely to occur.

So research defines these things and it provides the data that wildlife managers need to not only manage the population, but manage those diseases that are occurring within those populations.

We work with people from the human health field, agricultural animal producers, as well as veterinarians, wildlife biologists, wildlife veterinarians, the general public, people that are epidemiologists, pathologists, microbiologists, all these different groups work together to define what wildlife diseases exist, and define how they're transmitted and epidemiologic patterns for these diseases.

One example, a wildlife disease research can contribute to the management of a species can be seen as some of the research we've been conducting on the impacts of West Nile virus on rough grouse in Pennsylvania.

Rough grass in Pennsylvania and throughout the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast have been experiencing gradual declines over several decades.

And these declines are largely thought to be driven by the loss of young forest habitat that is critical for having healthy grouse populations.

However Lisa Williams, or the rough grouse biologist in Pennsylvania began to notice that starting in the early 2000s, in addition to these gradual declines, we would see these dramatic and precipitous declines in rough grouse that were temporarily associated with bad West Nile virus years in Pennsylvania.

Using this data, Lisa generate a hypothesis that West Nile virus was causing mortality and having impacts on rough grouse populations within Pennsylvania.

Lisa compiled a group of collaborators to investigate this question further.

It was a very diverse group of collaborators, involving wildlife biologists, veterinarians, pathologists, virologists, hunters and game bird propagators.

Working together over the last few years, we've addressed several of these research questions and really define the impacts of West Nile virus on rough grouse populations in Pennsylvania.

Through experimental challenge studies we've shown rough grouse are highly susceptible to West Nile virus and experience high mortality when infected with this virus.

Through field surveillance we've shown that rough grouse in Pennsylvania are exposed to West Nile virus within the deep woods of Pennsylvania and in grouse habitat.

We've identified what we think is the predominant mosquito vector for West Nile virus within grouse habitat.

We've begun to investigate the impact of habitat quality on how rough grouse respond to West Nile virus, both at an individual and population level.

And what we've seen is that rough grouse that have good quality habitat can rebound from outbreaks of West Nile virus better than those are in poor quality habitat.

So using this data that we've generated in defining the impacts of West Nile virus in rough grouse populations, we've generated the data that we need to not only manage the species better, but to manage the disease within the species.

(gentle music) >>Wildlife disease surveillance and monitoring is taking place all around the globe and it's being carried out by some of the world's top scientists and medical professionals.

But there are actually things that you can do right in your own backyard.

Simple things.

Now, the good place to start is to learn about the wildlife health issues in your community or in your state by visiting your state wildlife agency website, you'll almost always be able to find out what you need, and if it's not there contact your local university or college that may be conducting research.

Now on a personal level, it's really important that you keep your pets vaccinated and parasite free.

Many of the diseases that our pets can contract and carry are contagious, and sometimes very very dangerous to wild species.

And limit the contact that you allow your pets to have with wildlife.

No contact between them is really the best.

Now, if you like to feed wildlife in your backyard, so that you get a chance to see beautiful wild species, it's critically important that you keep the feeders, bird baths, and feeding stations clean.

Don't allow an accumulation of old moldy food to build up and pose a threat.

And also don't put out so much food in one spot that it attracts a large number of wildlife all at the same time, because proximity to one another really facilitates the spread of disease.

Don't be an inadvertent risk to the wildlife that you love.

Now, if you happen to find a wild animal, maybe a turtle in the road, it's critically important that you don't move that animal to an entirely different habitat.

If you have had an exotic pet, maybe one you bought at a pet store, a Python, as an example, never even consider releasing that animal to the wild.

The movement of domestic wildlife and the release of exotic wildlife into natural habitats has been a primary cause of the emergence of the diseases that can truly threaten or even wipe out our native wildlife species.

Ultimately, we need to keep in mind that the efforts we expand to protect wildlife, and to protect the environment will ultimately come back to us, by just putting in these few easy steps in your daily routine, not only are you protecting wildlife, you're protecting the health of your family and your community as well.

>>Funding for "Untamed" is made possible by.

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