Wisconsin Public Television University Place  F. Joshua Dein Exploring the Impacts of Wildlife Diseases  June 20, 2012 UP730   cc >> Welcome, everyone, to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. I'm Tom Zinnen. 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 Association, and the Science Alliance here at UW Madison, thanks for coming to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. We do this every Wednesday night, 50 times a year. Tonight it's my pleasure to introduce to you two people. We're going to have a two-part presentation. The second speaker who I'll introduce first is Megan Hines, and she'll be talking about the wildlife health event observation reporting. Her portion of tonight's program will provide a demonstration of an online reporting where anyone can share observations of wildlife health events. These observations are aggregated and made available in a variety of ways to the public, to natural resource managers, to researchers, and to public health officials in an effort to protect the well-being of all living things and to promote a healthy ecosystem. 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 with Joshua Dein. He's a veterinary medical officer here at the US Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center in Madison. His background includes work as an ornithologist, museum educator, and an endangered species veterinarian. Most recently he has focused on building tools and systems that make information about wildlife diseases more easily available to the public, to researchers, and to natural resource managers. He actively participates in several federal government inter-agency initiatives to strengthen the country's ability to detect emerging diseases. I'm delighted to be able to have both speakers tonight and to have the collaboration of such a large group of people. It's a kind of Wednesday Nite at the Lab that we haven't done before with a lot of interaction online, and I really appreciate the help of everybody that's 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 is also one of the sponsors of 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. It's an environmental event because that helps tie us to the world outside, not just the human made world, but events all around us. And that's going to be one of the themes in this presentation is a relationship of all of us to the environment. As Tom said, this may be different from many of the other Wednesday nights because, as the title says, we're really looking 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, what we're going to, whoops. 

So, the first thing we'll talk about is wildlife health and disease and the things surrounding that. Then we'll talk for a little bit about how that relates to shared risk from disease and introduce the concept of one health. We'll then move on to looking at how do we detect disease events, and then what you can do to help us with this whole process. So, this is what most people like to think about wildlife, healthy wildlife. In western culture, it's sort of what life was in the Garden of Eden where things are living in harmony with nature. We want to think about wildlife 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 of pseudo-wildlife. [LAUGHTER] So our friend Donald here may not exactly be wildlife. In a lot of ways we extend the same thinking and good feelings about wildlife to cartoon characters, which is a good thing. 

Unfortunately, this idealized idea of healthy wildlife isn't always the case. Sometimes there are natural dangers out in the world. There are predators. There's competition for food and shelter. There are severe weather events. There's all sorts of things that 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 pollutants, bacteria, viruses. 

And what we find out a lot is sometimes these events attract a lot of media attention, but it's usually the large events. And there are things people have concerns about. So I'm not sure how many of you remember a year and a half ago the big black bird die off in Arkansas where birds were flying out of the sky. We affectionately call this the aflockalypse. [LAUGHTER] In reality it was a big event. It was 10,000 to 15,000 animals but really nothing serious. They were all sort of startled and sort of bashed into each other. But that doesn't mean it's not important. It's just, those are the kinds of things that get recognition. And the media is really good at picking up on things. 

The media also sort of does things like think about, during the bird flu outbreak, Paris Disney Land was wondering if Donald actually died of bird flu. So you never know where these things are going to happen. I don't think it happened, actually. [LAUGHTER] So anybody who's really concerned about that, rest assured. I think Donald is alive and well.  So, our first question for the night is, with a show of hands, how many of you have ever seen a sick or dead wild animal? Okay, maybe the other thing I say. Anybody who hasn't? All right, well that's a good start. So, can I have three volunteers that want to tell me about what animal they saw? Volunteers? Okay, one. >> A deer on the side of the road. >> A deer on the side of the road. 

Okay. What did you think about that? >> Not a whole lot. [LAUGHTER] >> Okay, it was a deer on the side of the road, right? Okay, that's cool. Did you do anything about it? Did you tell anybody about it? Okay. How about somebody else? Yeah? >> A dead bat in my water bucket. >> Wow, okay. That's cool. I think. [LAUGHTER] Dead bat, so that must have been kind of startling. >> Yes. 

>> Yeah? So, what do you think about that? >> 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 bucket that sort of, how did you dispose of it? Did you throw it in the trash? >> I buried it. >> Buried it. Okay, you buried it. Did you tell anybody else other than your neighbor? >> No. >> 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. >> Okay, so we have a very sort of obviously sick squirrel. In your backyard, I assume. >> Front yard. >> Front yard. Okay, that's cool. [LAUGHTER] All right, so what was the outcome of that? >> 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 a tree, never saw it again, but did you tell anybody about this? >> No. >> Okay. So, things happen out there. All right, so now that we have those kinds of details, we had that kind of story, maybe, as you asked, you want to know why it died? Well, I can't tell you why that bat died. And that's a whole other issue in itself, but I think what we can do is we can examine what the possibilities are or other things that may cause it, and that gives us the opportunity to play a new game show. [LAUGHTER]  Called Name That Doom! [LAUGHTER] Okay, so I have on the screen here five general categories of things that might cause illness or death in wildlife. 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] [LAUGHTER] Okay, right there. >> Predators. >> Predators. [BELL DINGS] [LAUGHTER] Okay. >> Weather. >> Weather. 

That's a good one. [BELL DINGS] I put that one into this category here which is environmental quality. Now, that could do a whole lot of different things. That could be climate change, it could be habitat change, extreme weather events. And we've got a couple more. >> People. >> People. Could you be more specific about that? [INAUDIBLE] All right, and what would these humans do? >> Well, it's like they could maybe throw out rotten meat for them or something and they eat that stuff. >> 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 produce. 

[BELL DINGS]  All right, hey, it's just technology. [LAUGHTER] All right, there we go. How's that? And the final one? 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 lead poisoning. [LAUGHTER] Okay. There. >> Infectious disease. 

>> All right. [BELL DINGS] All right. So, congratulations, you've won the quiz. >> We just got a call from Merv Griffin. [LAUGHTER] >> I thought it was going to be Michael Feldman. [LAUGHTER] All right, your prize will be helping us to better understand how these kinds of things 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 cause it. And I'm going to try to use West Nile virus, which I'm sure all of you have heard about, as sort of an example of this. So, the next thing is to say, all right, now we know what the kinds of things that may cause things, how does this happen? 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 we can talk about this robin. It looks healthy. But animals are individuals. They have genetic variation I can tell you from personal experience when I provided the veterinary care for the whooping cranes, which are genetically really limited, boy, are they different individuals. I mean, one could say, you can do that, no you can't do that. So they really have abilities to withstand different things. And I'm sure you've seen the same thing in pets. They're not the same creatures. So we can assume that robin is healthy, but we don't know what else is going on. 

Is there enough food in his territory? Obviously during times with little rain it's hard to pull those worms out of the ground. So how do they get by? This spring, are they defending territory? Is he spending a lot of energy doing that? Those stressful activities, anything that decreases condition can make an animal more susceptible to a disease. Okay, so we have this robin. That's one part of the puzzle. We have a host. We have something that can get a disease. Then the robin has to live someplace, so he lives in your backyard, right? Where all good robins should live. But in your backyard, you're in control of that. That's his environment, but it's not necessarily a natural thing. So what kind of pesticides have been used in your backyard? Are they affecting his food resource? Herbicides, maybe? Do you have old pots filled with water that served as breeding 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 mosquitoes. Now, I'll tell you if you have mosquitoes that size in your backyard, move. [LAUGHTER] I don't think there's any question about that. So, let's say that he is, that robin is living in your backyard with all these other creatures, and one of the other creatures that is living there is this virus, and that actually is a picture of West Nile virus. Now, viruses, like animals, 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 live outside a host. So we're assuming that he's living there. 

And let's say the robin's buddy, the blue jay, met up with a mosquito that was actually carrying that virus. Okay? He got bitten five days ago. Still okay, still not showing, not getting sick, but then this mosquito then bites the blue jay and then goes and bites the robin, and you put all of these things together and you have West Nile virus disease. Okay? Which has really hit the east coast population of robins fairly hard according to some studies, as well as a number of other species. We're hoping there's a rebound, but it certainly did have an effect. So, these causes of wildlife disease and how they occur, the next question would be, why do we care about this? Okay, so we have three different diseases here, and these diseases that primarily affect just wildlife. 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 is known for quite a while. It can cause deaths in waterfowl but a lot of other animals as 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. Mycoplasma is a bacterial disease that actually was first seen at bird feeders. And so you get these birds with really big swollen eyes and they can't see anything, it's hard to eat, and they don't do very well, but a good example of people identifying a disease before we even really know about it. And then our latest tragedy is white-nose syndrome in bats. Whereas, this is something that's brand new and is spreading and can have a really significant affect on those populations. So those are just things I've said, but if you think about it, why do you care about wildlife, if you do at all? And so I think that really 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 too bad. 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 out of an ecosystem and lower the biodiversity, that can have serious consequences. And we're just really now trying to learn how those effects of loss in biodiversity really affects the whole system. Recreation. There's a wide range of recreational activities associated with wildlife. Some people are hunters. Some people are bird watchers. 

Some people are bird feeders. Some people are deer feeders. So there's lots of different things. So any of those things, and of these diseases that decrease the number of animals that you can see, hunt, feed actually probably is a concern because they're not there anymore. And lastly, if none of these work for you, how about aesthetics? So, if you talk about a hundred thousand dead ducks and you want to go to the beach, you might not like rotting carcasses strewn all over the beach. So even if you don't care anything about wildlife, you may not like to squish carcasses under your feet. 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, a little baby. 

Or it could be this. [LAUGHTER] A quite angry raccoon, maybe a sick raccoon. 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 about. But in reality, it's not their health versus our health. In reality, I encourage you to think about this as one health. Okay? One 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 environment. So the healthy ecosystem and environmental quality really has an effect on everything else, as we talked about in the disease puzzle. 

So we have wildlife, we have 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 interactions amongst those groups. And to think about all these features, the operative word here is sharing. Okay? You're sharing the environment. In a lot of ways you're sharing diseases as well. So here are the things we share. Diseases can be shared between humans and other animals. As much as some people don't like to admit, humans are animals. And because of that, it makes it that much easier to move disease back and forth. And, in fact, there's good evidence that humans give diseases to wildlife. For example, in Africa there's good evidence that lowland gorillas have been affected by ecotourists bringing unknown disease to their environment. 

So, these are called, collectively, zoonoses, or just zoonotic diseases. And so I may use those terms in the presentation. So, how do we share these kinds of diseases? Are they all around us? Well, actually, there's usually two, well we'll narrow it down to two things. Direct contact which means if you're going to touch an animal or something that came from the animal, that's a potential problem. Okay, now most people don't get to have poop slides in their talks. [LAUGHTER] So if a raccoon has ever left a present for you on your deck, you'll know what I mean. Now, the reality is that should have a big biohazard symbol around it. All right? That's not a good thing to play around with nor have kids play around this because that raccoon poop could have a parasite that affects people. All right? So, in general, the idea of handling wildlife or handling anything that comes from wildlife, and not just wildlife, pets, domestic anything, the good hygiene is always necessary. So lots of hand washing. 

And you got to remember that as humans are animals, hand washing also limits or reduces passing diseases from people to people. In fact, it's stated as the most effective preventive measure you can take is frequent hand washing. So just something to think is in the idea that we're all sharing things, and we want to keep some of these things to ourselves. Okay, the second part is that disease sometimes needs buddies called vectors which are things, usually other animals, that transfers and infected organism, bacteria, virus, parasite, fungus, from one host to another. And the most common villains here are ticks and mosquitoes. 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. But sometimes they even need some help, and they need the help of a reservoir. And a reservoir carries this infected organism without actually being harmed. And there's a great story here about our friend the white-footed mouse, which is the best, as far as we can tell, a really good reservoir for Lyme disease. Now, the interesting thing is these white-footed mice, basic field mice, do really well in fragmented habitats. 

That means sort of suburbia woodlands that have been chopped up into different pieces where the diversity of animals is not very large. And so they thrive where there aren't a lot of predators, where there aren't a lot of other competition. And so since they're really good at holding onto this bacteria, this Lyme disease organism, as you decrease the number of other animals that the ticks can bite, you increase the possibility that the white-footed mice is going to have the disease. And so more and more ticks are going to be infected, which then can transmit this disease to you. So it's another good reason to think that we have to think of our changes in our environment and how that affects the threat of disease transmission from wildlife to people. So it's something that we have some control over, and we have to think about everything we do in this regard. Okay, so I've given you a couple examples of zoonotic disease. Let's just add to that list. So we've talked about Lyme disease and West Nile virus. How many people think that we have plague in the United States? Usually when I say that to people, they say the same plague? I go, yeah, it's the same plague. 

It's been around for a long, long time. All of those things are examples of diseases that are transmitted by vectors. So we Lyme disease by ticks, West Nile virus by mosquitoes, and plague by fleas. Now, there are other vectors involved, but those are the main ones for that group. Then for the direct contact part you have the granddaddy of all zoonotic diseases: rabies. Probably the oldest thing known. Then we have, everybody's heard about bird flu. Monkey pox, sort of a big flash 10 years ago or so, and then SARS outbreak. The thing to remember here is that most of these are really new. I'm 61 and almost all of those diseases have either emerged or reemerged, we've found out about them within my lifetime. 

Other than plague and rabies, these are pretty new things, and that means that these diseases are emerging all the time. New things are happening. Either it's a part of the infected organisms that are changing, our environment is changing, people are changing, but there's lot going on, and, in fact, about 70% of all the emerging disease, at least in the last 20 years, have wildlife origins. So it's something to be aware of and concerned in a general sense that we know this is the way things are going. So, should you be concerned about these diseases? Well, yes and no. So, that gives us a new opportunity for a new game called Assess That Risk. [LAUGHTER] Okay, so the categories are, or actually one category: the disease and the number of cases in the United States in one year, in 2010. So, I'll put up the disease, I get three guesses for how many. Rabies, how many cases of human rabies were there in 2010? One guess for three. Any other guesses? >> Ten. 

>> Ten. 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 that in a moment. Okay, and we have one guess of 200. I'm going to give the gentleman over there the bell. [BELL DINGS] Two. All right, now this is interesting here. One of these cases was in Louisiana, the other one was in Wisconsin. Wisconsin does actually have quite a history with rabies. 

In 2004, a young woman in 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 getting it, if you get vaccinated before signs occur, then yes, you have a much better chance. But this is sort of amazing. 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. We have no idea of how many actually out in the wild have rabies. So, certainly, in Wisconsin, bats, skunks are an issue for rabies in Wisconsin. Okay, next guess. Plague, how many cases of plague? >> Zero. 

>> Zero. >> One. >> We got zero, one. Five. Fifty. Any others? >> Ten. >> Ten. Okay, well we're in that right ballpark. So... [BELL DINGS] I'll give you that one too. 

Two. Okay? 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. Then we'll move on. West Nile virus. Any guesses? Hundreds or thousands or tens. Tens, hundreds, thousands, let's do it that way. 

>> Hundreds. >> Hundreds, okay. Any other dissenting ideas out there? >> Ten. >> Ten. Okay. 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. Now, even though that figure is up there, that's in one year, that's all the people we know were infected by West Nile Virus, the virus itself. That doesn't mean all of those people got sick or all of the people died or there was even a problem. In fact, it's probably very low. 

In fact, it's been said that only 1% of the mosquitoes in a population are actually infected with West Nile virus, and probably one 1% of the people who actually get the virus from a mosquito develop a disease. Not a huge risk. It's there. Not a huge risk but something you want to take your chances here? Okay. And the last one, Lyme disease. Tens, hundreds, thousands? >> Thousands. >> Thousands. Oh, boy, that's pretty definitive. [BELL DINGS] All right? So, Lyme disease is the most common tick-borne disease. 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] So, what does that mean? That means take it seriously. Take precautions. CDC has good information on mosquito repellents and techniques. Wisconsin Department of Public Health does as well about how to try to limit your exposure to Lyme disease because it's out there and it's really in Wisconsin. >> How does it know to stop at the border? [LAUGHTER] >> 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. >> There's some degree of modeling in here. 

These aren't exact figures, and so it's more for a general sense that here in Wisconsin it's an issue. So, those are sort of the relative risks that we talk about. So you won another Name That Risk game, but what are the other effects that we should be thinking about here? So, we talked about what we call public health effects, the effects of West Nile virus on people, but I was just talking about the number of cases. If you look at from when West Nile first appeared in 1999 until last year, over 1200 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 seeing now is actually 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 virus without actually people getting sick. So that means people are becoming protected. However, it also causes another problem because if people with a circulating virus are giving blood, that's another problem. 

So everything is not hunky-dory. Where the other thing to realize is that there's an economic interest in all of this that are somewhat related to public 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 productivity dealing with the whole issue. So that's significant for one state, and you magnify that by 49 more. 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 with that program, trying to manage the disease in horses. And so this does add up when you think about how many different diseases we're looking at. Okay, and then lastly, but certainly not least, is the environmental costs. And we've talked about the loss of animals, population reduction in species numbers which was significant. 

And this happens over and over again, and if I can sort of step away from West Nile virus and just bring up the idea of white-nose syndrome in bats, the same question is, we know bats carry rabies so should we worry about bats from a public health standpoint? But it's been estimated that bats are worth hundreds of millions of dollars in agricultural ecological services 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. So all of these things are interrelated, and so there's a major concern that if our bat populations go way down, economic costs are going to go way up in addition to the environmental costs that bats add. Cave ecologies are almost dependent on the things that bats bring in. So, I can keep going, example, example, but it's time to move on to looking at West Nile virus in general and seeing how you fit into this big picture of this disease puzzle. So, in reality, we know that primarily West Nile virus is an interchange between wild birds and mosquitoes unless you have those big mosquitoes in your backyard. But it also has the opportunity to go and infect horses and infect people. So here, again, is another 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 get vaccinated. I have to vaccinate my animal. I have to put on mosquito 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, that that's the problem with birds out there and I'm not going to worry about it. It's not okay what's our shared risk here. And our shared risk is I can get sick. 

So if you think about this for an environmental perspective and you look, you want to study and you want to understand these relationships, then that can reduce the risk to the whole community. By understanding what is it about that cycle and how is the disease transmitted, hopefully we can eventually get to the point where these things, probably not disappear, but at least everybody benefits. 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 if you're a human because most likely you have friends or relatives who are going to say are you sick? Or you say, oh, I'm sick. All right? So that's pretty easy monitoring right there. If you have a pet, if you're a farmer and an animal's sick, well, you pretty much have the same, it's like having a small kid. They can't talk to you but you can pretty much tell when they're sick. So both of those have pretty good monitoring things. So how about for wildlife? Do we have any rabbit physicians out there? It's unlikely and, in fact, it's hard, I can't imagine the 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 harder thing to do. 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 it usually sort of goes up in a steep curve to you may have a lot of dead animals. 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. And so eventually animals may disappear and you actually can be back down to only having one that's out there even though there's a lot more, but how do we know? Well, how we know is that people are out there looking and saying, oh, there's something 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 animal out there to be seen, 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? Well, it's not terribly well defined at this point. There's no, at least for wildlife as opposed to humans and animals, we don't have that same kind of infrastructure. 

So then the question is, who is looking for these things? So if you compare those things between humans and livestock and wildlife, okay, so, for humans, CDC is a big organization. It's got lots of money, and what they do is they monitor people's health, and they make recommendations. They do a great job of providing information. And they're not just interested in people, they are interested in both the health of animals as it affects people. So there is a lot of human surveillance going on, and sometimes that does involve animal surveillance as well. If you talk about livestock, 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. So it's a really important thing to do is to make sure that disease transmission isn't occurring. However, when we get, whoops, when we get to wildlife, we're not that clear. The first two, diseases have to be reported. 

There are certain reportable diseases that allow federal and state and county health departments to identify what's going on. Same thing for livestock. There are things that have to be reported so you get a good, big picture. Well, there are no requirements to report wildlife diseases, so we really don't have a good overall integrated system as there is for the other two groups. So, what does that mean in the real world? Well, here's a map produced from CDC data, and, as I mentioned, every county has a health department, and they have to tell CDC every year how many people died in that county every year. 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 should want to move to... [LAUGHTER] Which had no deaths 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. 

Big surprise, right? However, if you try to do the same thing with wildlife, and these are not deaths per se, these are events that were reported to the National Wildlife Health Center. So it's the biggest national view we have, but, as you can see, there's an awful lot of counties that don't have any reports. So do you think nothing died there? It's probably things that died and there may be data but it may be in local sources, but since we don't really have a way of bringing that stuff together, we have a pretty limited picture of what kind of wildlife mortality occurs in the United States. So since, by and large, agency priorities aren't going to change because they're 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 your help in increasing our level of monitoring for these kinds of things. And so that leaves you to the largest thing is what you can do. Yeah? >> There it said wildlife events. >> Yes. >> How many animals died in those? >> That's a good question. 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 can do. And here are some suggestions for that plan. So the first is you can increase your awareness of wildlife disease and its impacts. Okay, well obviously attending this session is a good start in that regard, and you can encourage you friends and neighbors to do that as well. So, there's all sorts of information out there on wildlife diseases, what do you use? Well, you could play another game, but I'm sure I know what the answers are. They're the usual suspects of radio, television, newspapers, but certainly blogs, social media, all sorts of different places that you can get information. However, as we said earlier, the media tends to sensationalize, it tends to focus on things. 

You may not get the biggest picture of what's going on. So I would suggest an alternative. There are different outlets that give you a more comprehensive picture and more comprehensive information. And, again, lucky to be in Madison and Wisconsin is three of these are actually generated right here, the top three. And, of course, the CDC is always a good source for health information. And so that way, if you're really interested, you can get really the on the ground information about wildlife diseases. 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 people out there looking, that's going to give us a better understanding of what's out there. And this is, in a more formal sense, this whole idea of people going out and reporting what they see has been going on for a long time. 

So how many bird watchers do we have in the group. A few. Okay. So the Audubon Christmas count is a very longstanding effort for people going out and reporting what they see once a year. So, all of these activities have recently been put into the title of citizen science. And that's essentially the public going out and helping scientists collect data. And, if you think about it, untrained people have been contributing to science for a long time. If you look at Benjamin Franklin, Charles Darwin, they were essentially not trained scientists, but they contributed an awful lot to our science knowledge. And you can do that as well. There are all sorts of citizen science projects these days. 

You can identify galaxies online. You can report monarch butterfly larvae. All sorts of different observational data. And so here's how this can help. So, if a scientist wanted to know something about wood thrush, a small perching bird, and in fact you could say that was me because my graduate work was working on wood thrush. I was only studying it in a 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. And so you have to be able to 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. Okay, so as you can see, these birds winter in Mexico and Latin America. 

Then as we come to the spring, they all start coming up into the United States and Canada, and then, in the fall, the numbers decrease down. So that's pretty astounding that those data are citizen generated data. 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 fun way to record observations. Certainly, you could record live bird observations here, but we'd be much happier if you told us about dead animals. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to turn this over to Megan to explain about where and how to sign up, how to use it, and there's laptops out in the lobby that we can help you sign up for an account, learn how to use it, and then possibly, I urge you to do this because, who knows, with the late midsummer 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. [LAUGHTER] And if you're not comfortable with computers or using that, you can tell your friends, neighbors, relatives about this and tell them what you learned tonight and get them on board. 

So, Megan.  >> Is this working? >> Here, you want this? >> That's okay. Josh, can you switch? >> Sorry.  >> Cool. Thank you very much. So, yes, my name is Megan Hines, and I'm here working with the School of Veterinary Medicine. And I will give you a quick demonstration of the WHER application here. To create an account, essentially, click here on this button after visiting www.WHER.org, and just basically fill in some general information just like signing up for any other website. And you'll receive an email in your email inbox that you signed up with here, and it will have a link for you to click on to confirm your account. And that's just to make sure that no one else is spoofing your personal information. 

And while you're signing up here for an account, if you'd like to participate, we would urge you to join this Wednesday Nite at the Lab study group which is a special project that we're working on with the GHI. So I will quickly log in and give you a quick tour of how to make a report.  Okay, so after logging in, clicking on the navigation bar up on top to report an event will bring you to the main menu. You can also search, edit reports, and then find some 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 daily email alert if you're interested in finding out about what's being reported. Frequently asked questions, information about mobile reporting options, and help files, etc. 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 additional information and then saving. So, for the first page for location information we have the date. 

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. And this is, essentially, to refocus the map that you're looking at here. Oops. I'm usually not holding a microphone. [LAUGHTER] >> Can I do that? Can I be the microphone holder? >> All right, so after you've put in your search location and 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 at or, say, see a satellite image, if you know specifically where it is, you can drag this pin and, essentially, mark exactly where you were with the background imagery. The short description of the event down here on the bottom is basically something to name it so you can find the record again in your own list of records if you're interested in locating it. So I'll just use road kill raccoon. 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 can pick from a specific species name if you know of the exact name versus a general name, like you don't know, it's a duck. You don't know what kind of duck. Or an animal class name if you're really not sure. It's a bird, that's all I know. So here for raccoon. If you start typing a name, as soon as you get three letters in, it'll display a drop-down list of possibilities. I'm pretty sure it was a common raccoon. And if you can't figure out what you're looking at all, if you just see bones, there's a check box here down below. 

And so for the number observed is, essentially, how many animals of that species were involved. So whatever you entered or whatever you observed. So I saw one and it was dead and there were no sick. And if it was a large amount of animals and you were estimating, these check boxes down below let you say that it's an estimate. And then if you did anything with the animals, which we have a warning here in red, that means read it, we do not advise you to actually touch the animals. And so what I would suggest is left untouched. And then the condition of the 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 National Wildlife Health Center, they might want to know was the carcass fresh, could we go back and retrieve it. So that's kind of what that 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 continue. And so if you saw other animals, say there were robins and raccoons or something like that, you could continue to add animals here. I'm just going to hit next. The next page is essentially some comments about where the observation occurred, if you had any comments about that, and then gives you an opportunity to upload photos of the environment. So if you had pictures of the park where the animal was, you can include pictures there as well. And then if you made any agency contacts about this observation, say you called the DNR or you called the National Wildlife Health Center about it, 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 of everything that you've typed in. You 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 hit save unsubmitted and then 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 general public, and in this instance, because we're in Wisconsin, we have a message 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, or she can tell you, essentially, what the Wisconsin DNR is interested in learning about.  >> Thanks, Megan. Basically, the message says that the DNR has a wildlife health program and in certain 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 either decomposes or scavengers 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 says this in the email message, type in wildlife health in the search bar there, it'll take you directly to the wildlife health web page from the DNR. And right there will be the information. This can change periodically, so the most current information will be listed there. Most of the time, the things that we'll be most interested in in terms of situations will be what we call die-offs which I think Josh mentioned. 

We normally kind of think of as five or more sick or dead wildlife in one area or over a short time frame. 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 some available and try to sort out what's going on there. There are also a list of species on the right-hand side there where we have disease surveillance programs specifically. And so we're interested, like if you see a single dead loon, 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 the loon populations. 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 underlined and highlighted, it 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 give you contacts. So you can search by city/county or you can get a list of the service centers and it will give you information on address, phone numbers, and hours of operations. So, if you just want to take a look at that, we appreciate your help with that as well. And just to finish up, the group kind of thought that it would be good if we just gave you a real world example of what can happen with some of these citizen reports and what the end result can be. 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 of our wildlife health database at the DNR. In December 2005, we had a citizen report it to his local DNR office that he was finding several dead Pine Siskins in his backyard in Vilas County. 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 backyard. These were also collected and submitted for testing. Testing showed that these birds died from a salmonella infection. As other citizens reported their 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 make them aware of the situation and were also able to provide the public with information on how to protect not only the wild birds in their backyard, but also how to protect themselves and their pets from getting infected. So, hopefully this example illustrates that your observations and reporting your observations are very important to wildlife, to people health, and to pets. Thank you.  [APPLAUSE]