The USGS National Wildlife Health Center: A 'CDC for Wildlife'

The National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin, is a biosafety level 3 facility that investigates wildlife disease outbreaks nationwide. USGS.

Why wildlife health matters

Emerging wildlife diseases can cost human lives, harm economies and agriculture, shrink wildlife populations and disturb ecosystems. At least 70 percent of emerging human diseases — including West Nile virus, plague, Ebola, AIDS, SARS and influenza — began in wild or domestic animals. Understanding wildlife disease matters for wildlife, for people and livestock, and for whole ecosystems.

A "CDC for wildlife"

• Founded: in 1975, to give the nation expertise in wildlife health, as a Department of the Interior facility — the only national center dedicated to wildlife disease detection, control and prevention.
• Mission: national leadership to safeguard wildlife and ecosystem health through partnerships and science — often compared to the CDC's role for public health.
• Where: a USGS science center in Madison, Wisconsin, with specialized labs, plus the Honolulu Field Station (HFS) for Hawaii and the Pacific.
• Status: designated a USGS "mission essential" facility, it supports animal health emergencies and is registered with the CDC's Select Agent Program.
• Reach: a world leader against the deadliest wildlife diseases — avian influenza, white-nose syndrome in bats and others — detecting new pathogens, building rapid tests, running surveillance and designing controls, in the U.S. and abroad.

Three science branches

Its scientists span wildlife biology, ecology, statistics and modeling, epidemiology, veterinary medicine, microbiology, molecular biology, toxicology and immunology.

The center's three science branches and their main activities. USGS.

Surveillance

Most new and re-emerging human diseases come from wildlife, so early warning matters.

• Avian influenza: the center sits on the interagency steering committee for surveillance of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in wild birds. In December 2014, investigating a seemingly routine waterfowl die-off in Washington State with the state's Department of Fish and Wildlife, its scientists were the first to detect HPAI in U.S. wild birds — in northern pintail, mallard and American wigeon.
• Other diseases: white-nose syndrome, snake fungal disease, and Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), an emerging fungal disease of salamanders.
• Alerts: Wildlife Health Bulletins keep resource managers nationwide up to date.

WHISPers — the Wildlife Health Information Sharing Partnership event reporting system — is the center's online, partner-driven record of wildlife disease events across the U.S. It holds current and historic reports of sickness or death, typically involving five or more animals at one place and time, plus a searchable archive of laboratory-verified events, searchable by species, disease, county and dates — one of the largest wildlife disease databases in the country.

Highlights

Honolulu Field Station (since 1992): pools expertise with Hawaii and Pacific partners to identify and tackle wildlife health problems — tumors in sea turtles, diseases of coral and urchins, West Nile virus surveillance with the USDA, and screening endangered Laysan ducks for parasites before their reintroduction to Midway Atoll with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

A wildlife disease specialist samples diseased coral on Kauai's north shore. USGS.

White-nose syndrome: since it was found in New York in 2007, WNS has spread west across North America and killed millions of hibernating bats. The center characterized the fungus, defined the disease, built molecular tests for bats and caves, runs national surveillance, is studying how the fungus kills, and is developing management tools including a vaccine. Agencies have used this science in management and in the interagency WNS National Plan.

Sampling bats and cave surfaces for the white-nose syndrome fungus. USGS.

A plague vaccine for prairie dogs: sylvatic plague, a flea-borne bacterial disease that also infects people, is a major obstacle to recovering the black-footed ferret, one of North America's most endangered mammals. Ferrets depend on prairie dogs for food and burrows, so the center developed an oral vaccine for them, mixed into peanut-butter-flavored bait set out in colonies. Tested in labs and the field, it aims for better protection with less labor, lower cost and less harm to other species than spraying insecticides — helping ferrets, prairie dogs, people and western grasslands.

One Health

One Health holds that the health of people, animals and ecosystems is linked. When WNS kills insect-eating bats, for example, people lose "ecosystem services" such as natural pest control that allows less pesticide use. Partnerships are central:

• with the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative, the center is a Collaborating Centre for wildlife pathogens of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE);
• it belongs to the USDA's National Animal Health Laboratory Network, which tests for agents such as HPAI that matter to national security and the economy.

Looking ahead

With expertise in diagnostics, epidemiology and research, the center aims to lead a more proactive, collaborative response to emerging wildlife diseases — new models, tests and management tools to understand their spread and give managers better ways to respond.

Sources

Based on The USGS National Wildlife Health Center: Advancing Wildlife and Ecosystem Health, by Gail Moede Rogall and Jonathan M. Sleeman, USGS Fact Sheet 2016–3102, U.S. Geological Survey (DOI), citing Jones and others (2008); a work of the United States government in the public domain. The Honolulu, WHISPers, white-nose syndrome, plague and One Health sections, the diagram and the photographs come from the fact sheet's PDF; two WHISPers screenshots on commercial basemaps are left out. More: USGS National Wildlife Health Center.