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Wednesday Nite at the Lab. >> Welcome, everyone, to
I work here at the UW Madison Biotechnology Center, and I also
work for UW Extension Cooperative Extension, and on
behalf of those folks and our other sponsors, Wisconsin Public
Television, the Wisconsin Alumni
Alliance here at UW Madison, Association, and the Science
Nite at the Lab. thanks for coming to Wednesday
night, 50 times a year. Tonight it's my pleasure to
introduce to you two people.
presentation. WThe second speaker who I'llrt
introduce first is Megan Hines, and she'll be talking about the
wildlife health event observation reporting.
Her portion of tonight's program
an online reporting where anyone will provide a demonstration of
wildlife health events. caThese observations aref
aggregated and made available in
to natural resource managers, to a variety of ways to the public,
health officials in an effort to researchers, and to public
living things and to promote a protect the well-being of all
These reports can assist in the detection of common disease
events and also biosecurity concerns.
They can provide information to explore the interconnections
between human, domestic animal, and wildlife disease, and they
can help build baseline knowledge on wildlife mortality.
So that will be Megan's presentation.
Tonight, we're going to kick off
He's a veterinary medical officer here at the
US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in
Madison.
an ornithologist, museum His background includes work as
species veterinarian. Most recently he has focused on
building tools and systems that make information about wildlife
diseases more easily available
and to natural resource to the pubmanagers.esearchers,
He actively participates in several federal government
inter-agency initiatives to strengthen the country's ability
to detect emerging diseases.
both speakers tonight and to I'm delighted to be able to have
large group of people. have the collaboration of such a
the Lab that we haven't done It's a kind of Wednesday Nite at
online, and I really appreciate bethe help of everybody that'son
been working on this over the last six or seven weeks to get
it all tied together. And with that, please join me in
welcoming Joshua to Wednesday Nite at the Lab.
[APPLAUSE]
Well, thank you, Tom, and thank you all for
joining us tonight. And I also want to thank the
Global Health Initiative which
this program. And so I also want to wish you
a happy solstice. I think the important thing is
to recognize that as an event.
because that helps tie us to the It's an environmental event
human made world, but events all world outside, not just the
And that's going to be one of the themes in this presentation
is a relationship of all of us
As Tom said, this may be to the environment.
Wednesday nights because, as the different from many of the other
at this as a collaboration. We'd like to have an exchange of
information, so hopefully we'll get information from you as well
as I'll try to provide some information to you.
What we'd like to do is discuss the health of wildlife in all
sorts.
So, the first thing we'll talk So, what we're going to, whoops.
disease and the things about is wildlife health and
Then we'll talk for a little bit surrounding that.
risk from disease and introduce abothe concept of one health.red
We'll then move on to looking at
and then what you can do to help how do we detect disease events,
So, this is what most people us with this whole process.
healthy wildlife. In western culture, it's sort of
what life was in the Garden of
harmony with nature. Eden where things are living in
as being healthy. There are a lot of studies that
have shown there's actually a calming effect by watching
animals, which is always a good thing.
And even if this extends to sort
[LAUGHTER] of pseudo-wildlife.
not exactly be wildlife. So our friend Donald here may
same thinking and good feelings Inabout wildlife to cartoonthe
characters, which is a good thing.
Unfortunately, this idealized idea of healthy wildlife isn't
always the case.
dangers out in the world. SomeThere are predators.ral
There's competition for food
There are severe weather events. and shelter.
can happen. There are also man made dangers.
Obviously, some animals get hit by cars.
There's habitat changes which can affect how they live.
They can be exposed to
And what we find out a lot is sometimes these events attract a
lot of media attention, but it's
And there are things people have usually the large events.
So I'm not sure how many of you remember a year and a half ago
the big black bird die off
were flying out of the sky. We affectionately call this the
aflockalypse. [LAUGHTER]
In reality it was a big event.
but really nothing serious. IThey were all sort of startled
and sort of bashed into each
But that doesn't mean it's not other.
It's just, those are the kinds important.
And the media is really good at of thpicking up on things.tion.
The media also sort of does things like think about, during
the bird flu outbreak, Paris
Donald actually died of bird Disney Land was wondering if
So you never know where these things are going to happen.
I don't think it happened,
[LAUGHTER] actually.
concerned about that, rest So anybody who's really
I think Donald is alive and awell.d.
So, our first question for the
how many of you have ever seen a night is, with a show of hands,
Okay, maybe the other thing I sick or deasay.ld animal?
Anybody who hasn't? All right, well that's a good
start.
that want to tell me about what So, can animal they saw?unteers
Volunteers? Okay, one.
A deer on the side of the road.
Okay. What did you think about that?
Not a whole lot.
Okay, it was a deer on the [LAUGHTER]
Okay, that's cool. side of the road, right?
Did you tell anybody about it? Did you do anything about it?
How about somebody else? Okay.
A dead bat in my water Yeah?
Wow, okay. bucket.
I think. That's cool.
Dead bat, so that must have been [LAUGHTER]
Yes. kind of startling.
So, what do you think about >that?h?
I wanted to know why it had died.
Okay. All right.
I then fished it out of the rain bucket, and I called my
neighbor. >> Okay.
So we have a dead bat in a
dispose of it? bucket that sort of, how did you
I buried it. Did you throw it in the trash?
Okay, you buried it. >> Buried it.
than your neighbor? Did you tell >> No.y else other
No, okay, good. All right, one more.
Yeah? >> I had a lethargic squirrel in
my rose bush. When it would try to walk it was
like it was like this.
sort of obviously sick squirrel. >> Okay, so we have a very
Front yard. In your>> Front yard.ssume.
Okay, that's cool.
All right, so what was the [LAUGHTER]
I got a big heavy towel and put it on a tree.
Okay. >> I never saw it again after
that. >> Okay, and that's probably
a good thing. So we have a sick squirrel,
tried to do something, put it in
did you tell anybody about this? a tree, never saw it again, but
Okay. So, things happen out there.
All right, so now that we have
that kind of story, maybe, as you asked, you want to know why
it died?
bat died. WAnd that's a whole other issue
in itself, but I think what we
the possibilities are or other can do is we can examine what
that gives us the opportunity to things that may cause it, and
play a[LAUGHTER]show.
Called Name That Doom!
Okay, so I have on the screen here five general categories
of things that might cause
All right, your job is to identify what those things are.
So I'll entertain guesses for what's behind this.
Back there. >> Cars.
Cars. So accidents, trauma.
[BELL DINGS]
Okay, right there. [LAUGHTER]
Predators. >> Predators.
[LAUGHTER] [BELL DINGS]
Weather. Okay.
That's a good one. >> Weather.
I put that one into this [BELL DINGS]
environmental quality. category here which is
of different things. Now, that could do a whole lot
it could be habitat change, Thaextreme weather events.ge,
And we've got a couple more.
People. Could you be more specific about
that? [INAUDIBLE]
All right,
Well, it's like they could and what would these humans do?
them or something and they eat maybe throw out rotten meat for
Okay, so they throw out other things like chemicals, poisons,
things like that. All right, so we have all sorts
of other garbage that humans
[BELL DINGS]
All right, hey, it's just technology.
[LAUGHTER]
How's that? AllAnd the final one?o.
Yeah, over there. >> Being shot.
Being shot. I'll put that into the accidents
and trauma. So that's, as we call it, it's
sort of like acute traumatic
[LAUGHTER] lead poisoning.
There. Okay.
All right. >> Infectious disease.
All right. [BELL DINGS]
you've won the quiz. So, congratulations,
from Merv Griffin. >> We just got a call
I thought it was going to be [LAUGHTER]
Michael Feldman.
helping us to better understand Alhow these kinds of thingsbe
will affect wildlife. So what we're really going to do
is we're going to focus on this area down here, on the
infectious diseases that can
And I'm going to try to use West cause it.
of you have heard about, as sort Nile virus, which I'm sure all
So, the next thing is to say, all right, now we know what the
kinds of things that may cause
Okay, so if you think about this, it doesn't just happen.
Disease events are, you can think of them as a complex
puzzle. Each of these puzzle pieces can
exist by themselves, but when all the pieces come together you
might have some kind of a disease event.
So, again, using West Nile virus
It looks healthy. wBut animals are individuals.
They have genetic variation I can tell you from personal
experience when I provided the
cranes, which are genetically vreally limited, boy, are theyng
different individuals.
do that, no you can't do that. I mean, one could say, you can
withstand different things. SoAnd I'm sure you've seen theto
same thing in pets. They're not the same creatures.
So we can assume that robin is
else is going on. heIs there enough food in hisat
territory?
little rain it's hard to pull those worms out of the ground.
So how do they get by?
territory? This spring, are they defending
doing that? IThose stressful activities,gy
anything that decreases condition can make an animal
more susceptible to a disease.
That's one part of the puzzle. Okay, so we have this robin.
We have something that can get a We have a host.
Then the robin has to live disease.
backyard, right? someplace, so he lives in your
live. But in your backyard, you're in
control of that.
not necessarily a natural thing. That's his environment, but it's
been used in your backyard? SoAre they affecting his foodve
resource? Herbicides, maybe?
Do you have old pots filled with
places of mosquitoes? Those are things you can control
in his environment. And so the robin sort of shares
a lot of your backyard with other animals, other birds,
blue jays, for example, but also
Now, I'll tell you if you have mosquitoes.
backyard, move. mosquitoe[LAUGHTER]e in your
I don't think there's any question about that.
So, let's say that he is, that
with all these other creatures, rand one of the other creaturesd
that is living there is this
picture of West Nile virus. vNow, viruses, like animals,a
aren't always the same. Some of them are nastier than
others. They can mutate as we're seeing
with influenza virus. So this virus is living there.
Now, viruses don't live, can't
So we're assuming that he's livliving there.ost.
And let's say the robin's buddy,
mosquito that was actually the blue jay, met up with a
Okay? He got bitten five days ago.
Still okay, still not showing,
mosquito then bites the blue jay not getting sick, but then this
robin, and you put all of these things together and you have
West Nile virus disease.
Which has really hit the Okay?
fairly hard according to some studies, as well as a number of
other species.
but it certainly did have an We're hoping there's a rebound,
So, these causes of wildlife effect.
next question would be, why do disease and how they occur, the
Okay, so we have three different we care about this?
diseases that primarily affect diseases here, and these
So we have botulism, which is very different from human
botulism, avian botulism. It's a significant problem in
the Great Lakes these days but
It can cause deaths in waterfowl is known for quite a while.
well. A hundred thousand, five hundred
thousand, or even one report of a million casualties in one
outbreak. So this can cause a lot of bird
death.
disease that actually was first Myseen at bird feeders.al
And so you get these birds with really big swollen eyes and they
can't see anything, it's hard to
well, but a good example of people identifying a disease
before we even really know about
And then our latest tragedy is it.
Whereas, this is something white-nose syndrome in bats.
spreading and can have a really significant affect on those
populations.
said, but if you think about it, So those are just things I've
if you do at all? whyAnd so I think that reallye,
depends on who you are and what your perspective is.
And different people have different reasons.
So, if we look at one, one of them may just be empathy.
You just sort of say, oh, that's
I think, going back to the Eden approach, I think everything
should have a healthy life. And I think most people think
that about most things. But this sort of shatters that
whole idea. Okay, you may have a
conservation concern. I talked about the population
effects on robins, on waterfowl with botulism.
And anytime you take an animal
the biodiversity, that can have out serious consequences.ower
And we're just really now trying
loss in biodiversity really toaffects the whole system.of
Recreation. There's a wide range of
recreational activities associated with wildlife.
Some people are hunters.
Some people are bird feeders. Some people are deer feeders..
So there's lots of different
So any of those things, and of things.
number of animals that you can these diseases that decrease the
probably is a concern because they're not there anymore.
And lastly, if none of these
aesthetics? So, if you talk about a hundred
thousand dead ducks and you want
not like rotting carcasses to go to the beach, you might
So even if you don't care anything about wildlife, you may
not like to squish carcasses
So, all of that just recognizes that we all bring different
perspectives to this, and, even more, there's even other reasons
to actually care. And sort of thinking about
wildlife in general, if you can sort of summarize thinking, is
how do you feel about wildlife. You may not care.
You may just don't want to have dead animals around, or you may
go, ah, a cute little raccoon,
Or it could be this. a little baby.
A quite angry raccoon, [LAUGHTER]
And so is there a question as I'm happy with this one, but I'm
afraid of that one. Which do we do?
Are we concerned about this animal getting, the baby getting
sick? Or the angry one getting sick?
And are you concerned about the angry one getting you sick from
a disease that it might have? So that's another concern we
haven't really even talked
But in reality, it's not their about.
In reality, I encourage you to health versus our health.
Okay? think abouOne health.ne health.
There are lots of definitions but we can use the one at the
bottom which is talking about optimal health for people,
domestic animals, wildlife, plants, and our environment.
So if you look at this somewhat complex diagram, one of the most
important things here is the
So the healthy ecosystem and environment.
an effect on everything else, as environmental quality really has
puzzle. wSo we have wildlife, we havee
domestic animals, and we have humans all living in the same
area, and a lot of those things interact, and, certainly, where
potentially there can be disease
groups. And to think about all these
features, the operative word
Okay? You're sharing the environment.
In a lot of ways you're sharing diseases as well.
So here are the things we share.
humans and other animals. DAs much as some people don'tn
like to admit, humans are animals.
And because of that, it makes it
back and forth. thaAnd, in fact, there's goodase
evidence that humans give diseases to wildlife.
For example, in Africa there's
gorillas have been affected by good evidence that lowland
disease to their environment. ecoSo, these are called,nown
collectively, zoonoses, or just zoonotic diseases.
And so I may use those terms
So, how do we share these kinds in tof diseases?ion.
Are they all around us? Well, actually, there's usually
two, well we'll narrow it down
Direct contact which means if you're going to touch an animal
or something that came from the animal, that's a potential
problem.
to have poop slides in their Okay, now most people don't get
[LAUGHTER] talks.
a present for you on your deck, So you'll know what I mean.ft
Now, the reality is that should have a big biohazard symbol
around it.
That's not a good thing to play around with nor have kids play
around this because that raccoon
affects people. poop could All right?asite that
So, in general, the idea of handling wildlife or handling
anything that comes from
pets, domestic anything, the wildlife, and not just wildlife,
necessary. good hygiene is always
And you got to remember that as humans are animals, hand washing
also limits or reduces passing
In fact, it's stated as the most diseases from people to people.
can take is frequent hand effective prwashing. measure you
So just something to think is in
things, and we want to keep some the idea that we're all sharing
Okay, the second part is that disease sometimes needs buddies
called vectors which are things,
transfers and infected organism, usually other animals, that
fungus, from one host to bacteria, virus, parasite,
And the most common villains another.
You all know that sort of our local deer tick, I'm not sure.
that is a deer tick, for Lyme disease and mosquitoes
for West Nile virus.
some help, and they need the But sometimes they even need
And a reservoir carries this help of a reservoir.
actually being harmed. infected organism without
about our friend the And there's a great story here
best, as far as we can tell, white-footed mouse, which is the
for Lyme disease. Now, the interesting thing is
these white-footed mice, basic
fragmented habitats. field mice, do really well in
woodlands that have been chopped That means sort of suburbia
the diversity of animals is not up into dvery large.eces where
And so they thrive where there
there aren't a lot of other aren't a lcompetition.ors, where
And so since they're really good
this Lyme disease organism, as at holding onto this bacteria,
animals that the ticks can bite, you decrease the number of other
that the white-footed mice is ygoing to have the disease.y
And so more and more ticks are
can transmit this disease to going to be infected, which then
So it's another good reason to you.
our changes in our environment think that we have to think of
of disease transmission from and how that affects the threat
So it's something that we have wildlife to people.
to think about everything we do some coin this regard. we have
Okay, so I've given you a couple
Let's just add to that list. examples of zoonotic disease.
disease and West Nile virus. So we've talked about Lyme
that we have plague in the United States?
Usually when I say that to
plague? I go, yeah, it's the same
plague. It's been around for a long,
long time.
of diseases that are transmitted All of those things are examples
So we Lyme disease by ticks, by vectors.
and plague by fleas. West Nile virus by mosquitoes,
involved, but those are the main Now, there are other vectors
Then for the direct contact part ones for that group.
zoonotic diseases: rabies. you have the granddaddy of all
Then we have, everybody's heard Probablyabout bird flu.ng known.
Monkey pox, sort of a big flash 10 years ago or so, and then
SARS outbreak.
that most of these are really The thing to new.mber here is
I'm 61 and almost all of those
reemerged, we've found out about diseases have either emerged or
Other than plague and rabies, these are pretty new things, and
that means that these diseases
New things are happening. Either it's a part of the.
infected organisms that are changing, our environment is
changing, people are changing,
in fact, about 70% of all the emerging disease, at least in,
the last 20 years, have wildlife
So it's something to be aware of origins.
that we know this is the way and concerned in a general sense
So, should you be concerned about these diseases?
Well, yes and no. So, that gives us a new
opportunity for a new game
[LAUGHTER] called Assess That Risk.
or actually one category: Okaythe disease and the are,
number of cases in the United States in one year, in 2010.
So, I'll put up the disease, I
Rabies, how many cases of human getrabies were there in 2010?y.
One guess for three.
Ten. Any other guesses?
Okay, so we're not in the hundreds and thousands.
We're in the small numbers. >> Does it count if they had to
get vaccinated for it or they had to go through vaccines?
No, well, we'll talk about
Okay, and we have one guess of that in a moment.
I'm going to give the gentleman over there the bell.
[BELL DINGS]
All right, now this is Two.
One of these cases was in Louisiana, the other one was in
Wisconsin.
quite a history with rabies. Wisconsin does actually have
Milwaukee was bitten by a bat and became the first person to
actually survive rabies after she had developed signs.
And so to go back to your question, yes, if you're
vaccinated, the chances of you
vaccinated before signs occur, getting it, if you get
chance. thBut this is sort of amazing.er
But it's something if you think about that.
Now, if you compare that to the over 4,000 animals, non-human
animals, that were rabid, you can see there's a big
difference. And that's just the animals that
were tested.
actually out in the wild have We have norabies.f how many
So, certainly, in Wisconsin,
rabies in Wisconsin. bats, skunks are an issue for
Plague, how many cases of Okay,plague?uess.
Zero. >> Zero.
One.
Five. >> We gFifty.o, one.
Any others? >> Ten.
Ten.
ballpark. Okay, well wSo...in that right
[BELL DINGS]
Two. I'll give you that one too.
Both in Oregon. Not Oregon, Wisconsin;
Oregon the state. Both from the same dog or the
same dog's fleas. Okay, two people
in one household. Okay?
So not a big risk.
West Nile virus. Then we'll move on.
Hundreds or thousands or tens. Any guesses?
let's do it that way. Tens, h>> Hundreds.usands,
Hundreds, okay. Any other dissenting ideas
out there?
Ten. >> Ten.
Anybody want to vote for over a thousand?
[INAUDIBLE] We have a vote there?
Okay, good. [BELL DINGS]
All right, so I guess you could say hundreds but we'll give it
to you anyhow.
up there, that's in one year, Nthat's all the people we knows
were infected by West Nile
That doesn't mean all of those Virus, the virus itself.
people died or there was even a people got problem.all of the
In fact, it's probably very low.
only 1% of the mosquitoes in a In fact, it's been said that
with West Nile virus, and pprobably one 1% of the peopleed
who actually get the virus from a mosquito develop a disease.
Not a huge risk.
Not a huge risk but something you want to take your chances
here? Okay.
And the last one, Lyme disease. Tens, hundreds, thousands?
Thousands.
Oh, boy, that's pretty >> Thousands.
[BELL DINGS] definitive.
So, Lyme disease is the most All right?
And lucky us, here is a map.
This is just produced earlier this year of what your risk for
Lyme disease, and aren't we lucky?
[LAUGHTER]
That means take it seriously. So,Take precautions.ean?
CDC has good information on mosquito repellents and
techniques. Wisconsin Department of Public
Health does as well about how to
Lyme disease because it's out trythere and it's really into
Wisconsin.
the border? >> How doe[LAUGHTER]to stop at
That's a good question. If you can tell me that one, I
think there are a lot of people who would like to know that one.
It's called Chicago and the river.
Yeah. >> It looks like Kenosha and
Racine are not affected.
modeling in here. These aren't exact figures, and
so it's more for a general sense
issue. that here in Wisconsin it's an
relative risks that we talk So, those about.rt of the
So you won another Name That
other effects that we should be Riskthinking about here?the
So, we talked about what we call
effects of West Nile virus on people, but I was just talking
about the number of cases.
Nile first appeared in 1999 Ifuntil last year, over 1200t
people died of West Nile virus. So that's not just getting sick.
So it is a serious thing. So just keep that in mind.
But, luckily, what they're
there's an increase in immunity in sort of population immunity
that a lot of the samples they're testing now actually
have antibodies to West Nile
getting sick. virSo that means people arele
becoming protected. However, it also causes another
problem because if people with a
blood, that's another problem. circulating virus are giving
Where the other thing to realize So everything is not hunky-dory.
interest in all of this that are is that there's an economic
health. In one study in Louisiana in
2002, in six months it cost the state $20 million.
Not the state, well essentially $20 million in healthcare costs,
both actual clinic costs, lost
whole issue. productivity dealing with the
state, and you magnify that by So that's significant for one
Then you have the other angle that West Nile virus also
affects horses. And so there's some reports from
two or three states that were estimating $5 million to $10
million for each one of those states in costs for treatment,
for vaccination, and for dealing
manage the disease in horses. And so this does add up when you
think about how many different
Okay, and then lastly, but diseases we're looking at.
environmental costs. certainly not least, is the
of animals, population reduction And we've talked about the loss
significant. in species numbers which was
again, and if I can sort of step And this happens over and over
just bring up the idea of white-nose syndrome in bats, the
same question is, we know bats
about bats from a public health carry rabistandpoint?d we worry
But it's been estimated that
millions of dollars in bats are worth hundreds of
as sort of not necessarily that they eat a lot of mosquitoes but
they sort of are very important to the environment.
They eat all sort of insect pests.
And all the insect pests that they eat means there's less
pesticides that have to be used.
interrelated, and so there's a So all of these things are
populations go way down, major concern that if our bat
way up in addition to the environmental costs that batso
add.
dependent on the things that Cave ecologies are almost
So, I can keep going, example, bats bring in.
on to looking at West Nile virus example, but it's time to move
fit into this big picture of in general and seeing how you
So, in reality, we know that this disease puzzle.
interchange between wild birds primarily West Nile virus is an
those big mosquitoes in your and mosquitoes unless you have
But it also has the opportunity to go and infect horses and
infect people.
choice. How do you want to view this?
Do you want to view this as there's a disease out there, I
have to protect myself. I have to put barriers up for my
horse, for myself.
I have to vaccinate my animal. I have to get vaccinated.
repellant constantly. And all that's a good idea.
I wouldn't say you don't do any of that stuff, but none of these
things are perfect. That reduces your risk, it
doesn't eliminate it. If you think about this as
rather than an us versus them,
birds out there and I'm not thgoing to worry about it.th
It's not okay what's our shared risk here.
And our shared risk is I can get
So if you think about this for sick.
you look, you want to study and anyou want to understand thesend
relationships, then that can
community. reduce the risk to the whole
about that cycle and how is the disease transmitted, hopefully
we can eventually get to the
probably not disappear, but at point where these things,
And so this idea of understanding the disease
ecology in a large sense it probably a really important way
to move forward in a lot of these things.
One step to understanding how this is knowing how many things
are sick. So how do we monitor health?
Well, this is an easy question
likely you have friends or if you're a human because most
are you sick? reOr you say, oh, I'm sick.say
All right?
right there. So that's pretty easy monitoring
farmer and an animal's sick, If you have a pet, if you're a
same, it's like having a small well, you pretty much have the
They can't talk to you but you kid.
they're sick. So both of those have pretty
good monitoring things. So how about for wildlife?
Do we have any rabbit physicians
It's unlikely and, in fact, it's out there?
raccoons coming up and knocking on your day and saying you got
some Tylenol? It just doesn't happen.
We don't know how, it's a much
So, it's a big question mark. How do we monitor this?
In reality, it's not that easy. So, how would you recognize a
wildlife disease if you saw it? Well, it might start with one
dead animal, but often it's not usually one.
It usually starts increasing and
steep curve to you may have a it usulot of dead animals. in a
However, that dead animal, if you remember back to the puzzle,
everybody's looking for food, and for most animals that's
food, that's dinner.
disappear and you actually can And so eventually animals may
that's out there even though be back down to only having one
we know? there's a lot more, but how do
are out there looking and Wsaying, oh, there's somethingle
dead out there. So, without these steps you're
not going to know there's a wildlife disease.
So, if step one there's an
two, there's somebody out there to see it, and then three, what
do you do about it? Do you call somebody?
Do you go online? Do you write somebody a letter?
What's the process here?
defined at this point. Well, it's not terribly well
wildlife as opposed to humans and animals, we don't have that
same kind of infrastructure.
looking for these things? SSo if you compare those things
between humans and livestock and
CDC is a big organization. wildlife, okay, so, for humans,
they do is they monitor people's It's got lots of money, and what
recommendations. health, and they make
information. They do a great job of providing
in people, they are interested And they're not just interested
it affects people. in both the health of animals as
surveillance going on, and So there is a lot of human
animal surveillance as well. sometimes that does involve
well, the Department of Agriculture, state agriculture
agencies, are really interested in livestock health just because
of the whole economics of the whole thing.
You want to keep your animals healthy because that's people's
livelihoods.
to do is to make sure that So it's a really important thing
occurring. disease transmission isn't
when we get to wildlife, we're However, when we get, whoops,
The first two, not that clear.
There are certain reportable diseases have to be reported.
state and county health ddepartments to identify what's
going on. Same thing for livestock.
There are things that have to be
picture. reported so you get a good, big
to report wildlife diseases, so Wewe really don't have a goodts
overall integrated system as
groups. So, what does that mean in the
real world? Well, here's a map produced from
CDC data, and, as I mentioned,
department, and they have to every county has a health
people died in that county every tell CDC every year how many
So they make these maps showing how many deaths occur in the
counties. Other than that one tiny county
in Texas where I think everybody
[LAUGHTER] should want to move to...
in over 10 years, I think there's a problem there.
Anyhow, we know that people are dying in the United States.
So that's what this tells you.
However, if you try to do the same thing with wildlife, and
these are not deaths per se,
reported to the National these are events that were
So it's the biggest national Wildlife Health Center.
see, there's an awful lot of view we have, but, as you can
reports. counties that don't have any
there? So do you think nothing died
and there may be data but it may It's probably things that died
we don't really have a way of bringing that stuff together, we
have a pretty limited picture of
occurs in the United States. what kind of wildlife mortality
priorities aren't going to So since, by and large, agency
mission-driven, I don't see necessarily the large amounts of
money pouring into the idea of, okay, we need to do better
surveillance of wildlife. But what we can do is we can
tell you that we really need
level of monitoring for these your hkinds of things.g our
And so that leaves you to the largest thing is what you can
do. Yeah?
There it said wildlife
Yes. events.
those? >> How many animals died in
The center usually only records things that usually above 5 or
10 animals. Often it's somewhere between 10
and 100, let's say. Okay, so far we've reviewed the
issues of wildlife disease, wildlife health, and our shared
risk of diseases. And hopefully I've convinced you
that this should be important for all of us.
So what can you do? And probably the first thing you
do is make a plan for what you
And here are some suggestions for that plan.
So the first is you can increase
disease and its impacts. your awareness of wildlife
this session is a good start in Okathat regard, and you caning
encourage you friends and neighbors to do that as well.
So, there's all sorts of
wildlife diseases, what do you information out there on
Well, you could play another use?
the answers are. game, but I'm sure I know what
radio, television, newspapers, They're the usual suspects of
media, all sorts of different buplaces that you can getal
information.
media tends to sensationalize, However, as we said earlier, the
You may not get the biggest picture of what's going on..
So I would suggest an alternative.
There are different outlets that
picture and more comprehensive give you a more comprehensive
And, again, lucky to be in information.
of these are actually generated Maright here, the top three.ee
And, of course, the CDC is
information. always a good source for health
really interested, you can get And so that way, if you're
information about wildlife really the on the ground
So, the second thing you can do is help us increase the number
of observers. So, as you can see, all of these
different things can be happening.
If we can increase the number of
going to give us a better peunderstanding of what's outt's
there.
sense, this whole idea of people And this is, in a more formal
they see has been going on for a going out and reporting what
So how many bird watchers do we have in the group.
A few.
So the Audubon Christmas count Okay.
for people going out and is a very longstanding effort
year. So, all of these activities have
recently been put into the title
And that's essentially the of citizen science.
scientists collect data. public going out and helping
untrained people have been And, if you think about it,
long time. contributing to science for a
Franklin, Charles Darwin, they If you look at Benjamin
scientists, but they contributed were essentially not trained
knowledge. an awful lot to our science
There are all sorts of citizen And you can do that as well.
You can identify galaxies science pronline.these days.
You can report monarch butterfly
All sorts of different larvae.
And so here's how this can help. observational data.
know something about wood thrush, a small perching bird,
and in fact you could say that
was working on wood thrush. waI was only studying it in ark
20-acre wood lot. But I was interested, we really
need to know more about population effects, especially
now that there's a real reduction in wood thrush
numbers.
look farther than 20 acres. And so what you can do for those
birds, did anybody ever use eBird?
eBird is a program at Cornell Lab of Ornithology that,
essentially, you can go and report your live bird
observations to eBird, and then what they've done if they've
taken those observations, added habitat information, geographic
information, and then come up with these occurrence maps which
hopefully you'll be able to see.
birds winter in Mexico and Latin Okay, so as you can see, these
Then as we come to the spring, America.
the United States and Canada, thand then, in the fall, theo
numbers decrease down.
those data are citizen generated So that's pretty astounding that
Okay? Pretty impressive.
Now imagine what we could do is if we could overlay information
on dead wood thrush on top of information on live wood thrush
to get a better understanding where some of these population
declines might be happening and potentially what their causes
might be. So, that leads us to the next
slide, which is a tool that has been developed specifically for
that purpose. The wildlife health event
reporter is a simple, quick, and
Certainly, you could record live fun way to record observations.
be much happier if you told us bird observations here, but we'd
So what I'm going to do now is about dead animals.
Megan to explain about where and I'm going to turn this over to
and there's laptops out in the how to sign up, how to use it,
up for an account, learn how to louse it, and then possibly, In
urge you to do this because, who
day, you might see something on the side of the road on the way
home and you can just jump on and report it.
It will be really cool if there was a big spike in reports
tonight.
And if you're not comfortable with computers or using that,
you can tell your friends,
and tell them what you learned neighbors, relatives about this
tonight anSo, Megan. on board.
Is this working?
That's okay. >> Here, you want this?
Josh, caSorry.switch?
Cool. Thank you very much.
So, yes, my name is Megan Hines,
School of Veterinary Medicine. and I'm here working with the
demonstration of the WHER And Iapplication here.quick
To create an account, essentially, click here on this
button after visiting www.WHER.org, and just basically
fill in some general information
other website. just like signing up for any
your email inbox that you signed And you'll receive an email in
link for you to click on to up wiconfirm your account.have a
And that's just to make sure
your personal information. that no one else is spoofing
for an account, if you'd like to And while you're signing up here
to join this Wednesday Nite at participate, we would urge you
special project that we're the Lab study group which is a
So I will quickly log in and working on with the GHI.
give you make a report.f how to
Okay, so after logging in,
up on top to report an event clicking on the navigation bar
You can also search, edit wireports, and then find somenu.
other helpful links over on the upper right side here.
Essentially some news, ways for you to stay on top of what
reports have been made such as a
interested in finding out about daiwhat's being reported.re
Frequently asked questions, information about mobile
reporting options,
So, to quickly make a report, click on this report event
from a single location. The first tab is location.
Then you have animals involved
and then saving. and then additional information
location information we have the So, for the first page for
So, yesterday I did see a raccoon near my home on the side
of the road, as Josh mentioned. So I will do a rough location
here in this search box.
refocus the map that you're And thlooking at here.ly, to
Oops. I'm usually not holding a
microphone. [LAUGHTER]
Can I do that?
All right, so after you've Can I be the microphone holder?
then hit search, the map will re-center itself, as you can see
here. To zoom in and get a better
picture of what you're looking
image, if you know specifically where it is, you can drag this
pin and, essentially, mark
background imagery. exThe short description of thee
event down here on the bottom is
so you can find the record again basically something to name it
you're interested in locating in your own lit. of records if
So I'll just use road kill
Next. The next page is adding any
animals involved. If you saw just one species, you
would just add a single species observation.
So, here on the left side, you
name if you know of the exact name versus a general name, like
you don't know, it's a duck.
duck. YOr an animal class name if
you're really not sure. It's a bird, that's all I know.
So here for raccoon.
soon as you get three letters in, it'll display a drop-downs
list of possibilities.
raccoon. I'm pretty sure it was a common
you're looking at all, if you just see bones, there's a checkt
box here down below.
is, essentially, how many Aanimals of that species wered
involved. So whatever you entered or
whatever you observed.
there were no sick. And if it was a large amount ofd
animals and you were estimating,
you say that it's an estimate. these check boxes down below let
with the animals, which we have a warning here in red, thatg
means read it, we do not advise you to actually touch the
animals.
left untouched. And then the condition of thes
animal. And why we're interested in this
information is if this is something of interest to, say,
the Wisconsin DNR or to the USGS
they might want to know was the carcass fresh, could we go back,
and retrieve it.
information is for. And then if you took a photo,
you could upload a photograph here and give it a name.
But I'm just going to hit save
And so if you saw other animals, and continue.
raccoons or something like that, say there were robins and
animals here. I'm just going to hit next.
The next page is essentially
observation occurred, if you had some comments about where the
then gives you an opportunity to any comments about that, and
environment. upload photos of the
park where the animal was, you So if you had pictures of the
well. And then if you made any agency
contacts about this observation,
called the National Wildlife say you called the DNR or you
could make a note here. These are all optional fields
that I just showed you, so I'll skip them.
The last page is just a review
in. oYou can get a little overview,
and, if you're satisfied, you hit the green button to submit.
If there's something else you wanted to add later, say you had
a picture on your phone and you had to go download it or
something like that, you could
come back later and add the picture and submit the report.
So after you submit the report, depending on where you are,
you'll see a message that the state or federal agency has
given us to share with the
instance, because we're in general public, and in this
from the Wisconsin DNR. And so I would like to introduce
Nancy, who's joining us today from the DNR.
And I can show you, essentially,
essentially, what the Wisconsin DNR is interested in learning
about.
Thanks, Megan.
the DNR has a wildlife health Basicprogram and in certain that
situations or for certain species we are interested in
hearing about those directly so that we can make a judgment as
to whether or not we would like to follow up and try to retrieve
that carcass quickly before it
get it and do some diagnostic testing on it to try and figure
out why it did die. And so you'll get that message
in your email, and it gives you a link to click to go to the
homepage that's shown here. And if you type in the, you want
to do that for me, Megan, it
type in wildlife health in the says this in the email message,
directly to the wildlife health searcweb page from the DNR.e you
And right there will be the information.
This can change periodically, so
will be listed there. Most of the time, the things
that we'll be most interested in
what we call die-offs which I in tthink Josh mentioned.ll be
We normally kind of think of as five or more sick or dead
wildlife in one area or over a
That's usually kind of unusual, and so most of the time our
program is going to have an interest in trying to retrieve
carcasses if there are still
out what's going on there. some available and try to sort
on the right-hand side there There are also a list of species
surveillance programs wherspecifically.ease
And so we're interested, like if
we're interested in hearing about that directly, again so
that we can try to retrieve the carcass because we're trying to
document what is going on with
But to do that we need to get the reports right away so that
we have the chance to get out there and get those carcasses.
So in there where it's
says contact your local DNR office, if you click on that, it
will take you to another page where you can search for the
closest DNR office and it will
So you can search by city/county give you contacts.
service centers and it will give or you can get a list of the
phone numbers, and hours of you infooperations.address,
So, if you just want to take a
help with that as well. And just to finish up, the group
kind of thought that it would be
world example of what can happen good if we just gave you a real
reports and what the end result with somecan be.se citizen
So, I'm afraid I've got to read my example.
I just need to be able to see it.
So this real world example is meant to show you the importance
of sharing your observations of sick and dead wildlife.
So this was taken directly out
at the DNR. of In December 2005, we had ase
citizen report it to his local
several dead Pine Siskins in his DNR office that he was finding
The dead birds were collected and sent to the DNR's wildlife
health program for testing. At the same time, another
citizen in Marinette County reported three dead Siskins and
two dead gold finches in her
These were also collected and submitted for testing.
Testing showed that these birds died from a salmonella
infection.
observations, the final picture for this event showed that birds
from a 10-county area from Iron County to Brown County were
affected. Now, as most of you know, people
and even pets can get salmonella.
So thanks to the observations and reports of people like you,
we were able to get carcasses collected right away that were
fresh enough to test. Once the tests confirmed that
the birds were dying of salmonella, we were able to get
information out to the public to
and were also able to provide mthe public with information onn
how to protect not only the wild
also how to protect themselves birds in their backyard, but
infected. aSo, hopefully this example
illustrates that your observations and reporting your
observations are very important to wildlife, to people health,
and to pets.
[APPLAUSE]