Headquarters and location: National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) is headquartered in Fort Collins, Colorado.
Co-location: NWRC is co-located with Colorado State University.
Campus and field network: on a 43-acre campus on the foothills on the West Side of Fort Collins; NWRC has 8 other field stations across the United States.
Organizational affiliation: part of the United States Department of Agriculture Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (USDA APHIS).
Mission: to reduce wildlife conflicts, disease, and damage management issues to protect human agriculture, public health, and natural resources in the United States.
Strategic focus and approach
Research philosophy: approach wildlife conflicts from all possible angles with an emphasis on creative, cutting-edge, and especially nonlethal solutions to wildlife damage and disease problems.
Nonlethal research focus areas:
Reproductive control
Developing repellents
Other methods that alter animal behavior on the landscape
Multidisciplinary expertise: immunologists, physiologists, economists, chemists, and forest wildlife biologists.
Unique value proposition: not a typical wildlife research center; the combination of diverse groups working together to assess damage and manage disease or damage from wildlife.
Global uniqueness and capacity: NWRC highlights its unique capacity to hold any animal for research.
Long-term goal of facilities: maintain a variety of facilities to study reptiles, amphibians, fish, birds, raccoons, skunks, and coyotes; use advanced tools to capture real-time interactions.
Real-time monitoring: hardwired camera video system to capture animal activity when new lures, attractants, or baits are introduced to pens; helps optimize product development.
Animal welfare commitment: daily oversight to ensure quality care and humane treatment; aim to meet Animal Welfare Act requirements and provide a consistent experience across research activities.
Facilities, care, and operations
State-of-the-art facilities: integrated systems for observing animal behavior and ensuring welfare.
Animal care standard: commitment to consistent humane care that aligns with legal and ethical guidelines.
Operational testing: collaboration with the operational program enables field testing of developed products and methods.
Research areas and themes
Core research areas: invasive species, wildlife disease, agricultural and natural resource protection, and product development.
Invasive species and native wildlife impact: invasive species on islands significantly impact ground-nesting native birds; focus on endangered species protection from invasive predators.
Environmental DNA (eDNA): development and use of environmental DNA to detect organisms by DNA shed into the environment; enables detection of hard-to-catch species.
Case studies in eDNA: successful assay development for Burmese python and feral swine (a large invasive species in the US).
Interdisciplinary approach: NWRC is an interdisciplinary group of scientists solving problems through multiple approaches.
Chemistry, vaccines, and product development
Chemistry focus: exploring chemical compounds to repel, attract, or contracept animals.
Vaccines and baits: research on developing novel vaccines, novel baits to deliver vaccines to wildlife, and novel baiting strategies for landscape distribution to maximize uptake by target populations.
Product development capabilities: strong ability to translate research into products and register them with regulatory agencies; provide analytical data.
Data quality: analytical data must be accurate, reliable, repeatable, and defensible to support regulatory approval and adoption.
Disease management and vectors
Rabies ecology in the US: rabies circulates naturally in several carnivore species, including raccoons, skunks, coyotes, gray foxes, and mongoose in Puerto Rico.
Rabies program goals: vaccination of wildlife to prevent or control spread, reduce human exposures, and protect pets in natural areas.
National objective: move toward eliminating rabies from raccoon populations in the Eastern United States.
Vector-focused research: use of DNA to understand vectors of pathogens, including biting midges, which transmit diseases affecting livestock and wildlife; highlights the challenge of studying very small vectors.
Forensics, wildlife conflict, and applications
Conflict scenarios: wildlife interacting with human activities such as aircraft operations, crop depredation, and livestock predation.
Forensic use of DNA: applying DNA methods to wildlife and livestock to identify predators from carcasses; capabilities include identifying species such as puma, wolves, and bears from swabs.
Practical aim of forensics: support management decisions by accurately identifying threats and sources of predation.
Collaboration, partnerships, and translation to practice
Core goal: enable technologies for use by agricultural interests, private citizens, and wildlife managers.
Partners and networks: NWRC collaborates with universities, private institutions, other government agencies, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and state agencies; emphasizes broad collaboration.
Role of operational program: collaboration with field operations is critically important for field testing and validating center-developed tools.
Intellectual property and industry impact: the center has a variety of patents and licenses translated to the private sector; if a solution shows market potential, industry partners are engaged to develop the business case and bring products to market.
Research protocol development: NWRC designs research protocols and studies to test hypotheses and then seeks industry partners to advance the products or management techniques.
Vision, impact, and personal reflections
Leadership vision: aim to be a competent, well-respected management organization with real impact on reducing human-wildlife conflict and promoting coexistence with wildlife.
Translational journey: satisfaction from moving a discovery through research, development, registration, and operational use; described as rewarding, akin to a sports milestone like scoring a touchdown.
Core message: making a difference in wildlife management and coexistence is vital and central to the center’s mission.
Key terms and concepts
Nonlethal solutions: strategies that reduce wildlife damage or disease without killing wildlife.
Reproductive control: methods to reduce wildlife reproduction as a management tool.
Environmental DNA (eDNA): DNA shed by organisms into the environment used to detect presence or absence of species.
Biting midges: tiny vectors that transmit pathogens to livestock and wildlife; study of their movement and genetic relationships.
Animal Welfare Act: legal framework guiding humane treatment and care of animals in research.
Vaccine delivery and bait strategies: approaches to vaccination and bait distribution to maximize uptake by target species.
Forensics in wildlife management: using genetic tools to identify predators or sources of predation from biological samples.
Regulatory registration: process of obtaining approval to market and use wildlife management products.
Interdisciplinary science: integration of multiple disciplines to solve complex wildlife problems.
Field testing and applicability: translating lab research into practical field tools through collaboration with operational programs.