Wildlife Health and Humans

What is disease?

• disease: a disordered or incorrectly functioning organ, part, structure, or system of the body resulting from the effect of genetic or developmental errors, infection, poisons, nutritional deficiency or imbalance, toxicity, etc

Human Dimensions of Wildlife Disease

1. Real of perceived negative impact on wildlife valued by people

2. Real or perceived threat to human health

3. …domestic animals

Health and disease

• Type of Disease

  • infectious

  • genetic

  • autoimmune

  • age related

  • environmental

  • parasitic

  • others?

• How do you know if you’re sick?

  • symptoms

    • subjective, things that the patient feel (fatigue)

  • signs

    • discovered by the physician (or you)

      • prognostic

      • anamnestic

      • diagnostic

      • pathognomonic

Why do we care about wildlife disease?

• When there is money involved

  • hunting

  • tourism

  • cattle

  • ruins the view

• When people are at risk

  • Zoonotic diseases

  • direct risk

  • indirect risk

The cost of wildlife disease

• CWD in Wisconsin: $2.5 million to try to control the CWD outbreak

• Swina industry in NC: 2nd in the nation, 1st in number of piglets

• Hunting: over $1,000,000 a day

• COVID-19

Public perception of wildlife health/disease

• What do people think/want with wildlife?

  • shift in perceptions

  • feel good conservation (Somewhere else)

  • Individualistic view of wildlife health and how to help

  • Lots of misinformation

One Health

• 75% of all emerging human infectitious disease in the past 3 decades orginated in animals

• Environmental health may affect human and animal health through contamination, pollution and poor conditions that may lead to new infectious agents

• to provide adequate healthcare, food and water for the growing global population, the health professions, and their related discilipins and institutions, must work together

Why are zoonotic diseases different when in environments with high human densities?

• Densities are higher (human and wildlife)

• Contact is more common (intra and interspecies)

• People do not know what to do about it

• Better chance of “seeing” the disease

• Harder to control: public opinion, public health hazard

What is the role of people in wildlife disease?

• Climate change

• unnatural densities

• unnatural contact

• vector species

• fragmentation

• translocation of species

• translocation of pathogens

• research

• tourism

Some numbers

• graphs of rabies

Infectious disease

• a disease caused by the entrance into the body of a biological agent (as bacteria, protozoans, fungi, or viruses) which grow and multiply

• communicable diseases

• function: an infectious disease transmissible (as from person to person) by direct contact with an affected individual or the individual’s discharges or by indirect means (as by a vector)

Transmission (for infectious disease)

• Direct

  • vertical

    • mother to baby

  • horizontal

    • direct contact (bite, lick, scratch, etc)

    • sexual

    • air droplets

    • latrogenic (infected medical materials)

  • indirect

    • environment (fecal-oral)

    • vectors

Parasitism: Endoparasites vs Ectoparasites

• Parasitism: relationship between 2 species where one benefits (parasite) at the expense of the other (host)

• Ectoparasite: lives on the surface of the host for at least one of its life stages

• Endoparasite: lives inside the host for at least one of its life stages

Transmission of Parasites

• Direct

  • vertical

    • mother to baby

  • horizontal

    • direct physical contact

      • latrogenic

  • indirect

    • environment (fecal oral)

    • vectors

Personal safety

• Know what can be out there

• Use protective gear that will protect you against real threats

• Be aware of the pathogens that you will take with you

• Know the symptoms and signs of the diseases you might have encountered

• Trust your vaccines