TWELVE Summary and Future Directions

Formal wildlife disease studies began among North American and some European biologists, managers, and hunters (Leopold 1933; Carson 1962; McDiarmid 1962, 1969; Davis et al.

1970, 1971; Davis and Anderson 1971; von Braunschweig 1979; Friend 2012). This discipline has grown into a worldwide concern of biologists, managers, public health agencies, and veterinary interests (Anonymous 2012, Jessup and Gillin 2012), and expanded into interdisciplinary fields focused on the health of populations and ecosystems (Aguirre et al. 2002). A very few of the common sources of information on wildlife diseases include the Journal of Wildlife Diseases, Emerging Infectious Diseases, the Journal ofFish and Wildlife Management, the Journal of Wildlife Management, and the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine. Less information appears available on its development among Asian countries, but there undoubtedly also is a long history of interest and research in these societies as well.

While there are practical matters and concerns related to wildlife diseases, there also are fundamental theoretical issues addressed through these studies. For example, parasites and diseases are recognized as major selective forces in the co-evolution of all life forms (Price 1980, Price et al. 1988, Loye and Zuk 1991, Zimmer 2000). Selective pressures from parasites may have influenced the evolutionary formation of separate sexes (Hamilton 1980). Studies in wildlife diseases increasingly play a role in better understanding the theoretical fundamentals of evolutionary processes.

Emerging infectious diseases (EIDs) are important future considerations affecting wildlife, humans, and domestic animals (Sleeman and Gillin 2012, Pello and Olsen 2013). Five to six EIDs have appeared annually, on average, over the past 80 years, and have disproportionately emerged from perturbed ecological niches, especially those in tropical areas with vector-borne enzootic diseases (Morens et al.

2004, Jones et al. 2008).

Emerging infectious diseases have played a central role in human history. By the midnineteenth century, insights on the role of microbes in infectious diseases resulted in the development of such countermeasures as vaccines and passive immunotherapy, as well as drugs against causative agents (Fauci and Morens 2012). At one time there was an optimistic hope that infectious diseases soon would be overcome (Deming 1894). However, as predicted in the 1992 Institute of Medicine report (Lederberg et al. 1992), previously unknown infectious diseases continued to emerge; examples include acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), Ebola virus infections, hantavirus infections, Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS); others have re-emerged, such as influenza, cholera dengue, multiple-drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and drug-resistant forms of tuberculosis (Morens and Fauci 2012, Lau et al. 2013, Pello and Olsen 2013). Virtually all of the most serious zoonotic infectious (HIV, SARS, WNV, pandemic influenza, hantaviruses, Ebola) diseases have emerged from wild animals.

Among wildlife, EIDs include white-nose syndrome in bats, chronic wasting disease in cervids, the chytrid fungus among amphibians, devil facial tumor disease, and many others. The EIDs of free-living animals can be classified into three major groups based on key epizootiological criteria (Daszak et al. 2000, Daszak and Cunningham 2002). Some EIDs are associated with “spill-over” from domestic animals or humans to wildlife populations living in proximity. Other EIDs are directly related to human intervention, such as through host or parasite translocations; Lastly, some EIDs appear to have no overt human or domestic animal involvement.

Often these EIDs initially generate considerable interest and funding—only to be followed by a decline in that interest (and funding). There would be considerable benefit in funding a sustained nationwide program of surveillance, monitoring, research, and management to address EIDs (Hygnstrom and Brown 2012).

One important EID link between wildlife and humans involves hunters pursuing game for bush meat or sport in many parts of the world. Because of our interconnected world, a disease emerging in one part of the globe— even a very remote region—soon is potentially connected with all other parts of the world.

The recently emerging One Health movement embodies a perspective that recognizes how public and animal health depend on the continued integration of understanding of humans, domestic animals, wildlife, and their shared environment (Coker et al. 2011). It provides a broader understanding of health and disease, and calls for a unity of approach achievable only through a perspective that integrates human, domestic animal, and wildlife health. Wildlife health science is viewed as an essential component of global disease prevention, surveillance, monitoring, control, and mitigation (http://www.oneworldonehealth.org/). Collaborative relations among governments, local people, and the private and nonprofit sectors are needed to address global health and biodiversity conservation. It is also clear that there is an important relationship between the health of all organisms and ecosystem integrity.

Interest in emerging diseases continues to increase. In 1995, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. A small sample of other journals emphasizing emerging diseases includes Public Library of Science (PLoS) Pathogens, the Journal ofInfectious Diseases, Vaccine, and mBio. The internet resource ProMED, now operated by the International Society for Infectious Diseases, was initiated in 1994 and is an important source of information. Broad availability of information on diseases makes it far more difficult for governments to suppress information; at the same time it can enhance the work of public health agencies to gain support for controlling disease outbreaks (Chan et al. 2010).

Internet resources are an example of another future consideration, the exponential speed by which information is transmitted.

Besides ProMED (http://www.promedmail.org/), examples include Health Map, developed at Boston Children’s Hospital in 2006 (http://www.healthmap.org/en/); Wildlife Health Event Reporter (WHER) (http://www. whmn.org/wher/), under the auspices of Wildlife Health Monitoring Network; and online journals such as Emerging Infectious Diseases, Public Library of Science (PLoS), and others. Such resources keep the scientific community and the public informed about the emergence and contemporary changes in the status of diseases. While books with key information likely will continue to play a key role for many years, traditional paper books increasingly will be replaced by digital resources, with considerable environmental savings. Digital epidemiology (Sonricker-Hansen et al. 2012) is used to monitor immediate news sources such as blogs, news releases, Twitter, Facebook, and search engine patterns to provide real-time information on many issues, including new outbreaks; the WHER program is one useful addition to this kind of information gathering (http:// whmn-wher.blogspot.com/). Outbreak detection systems for use with very large multiple surveillance databases can be adjusted both to the data available and to the requirements of full automation (Enki et al. 2013). Because of the frequency of personal networked phones and computers, the speed with which scientists and even lay citizens can gather and distribute information on new disease outbreaks is very rapid. Heightened awareness of outbreaks, including EIDs, is itself a countermeasure against these diseases (Morens and Fauci 2012).

The development of new scientific tools and techniques undoubtedly will continue to expand and increase in its pace. Since the early 1990s, increasing facility with genetic techniques has led to the genetic sequencing of thousands of microorganisms, their vectors, and hosts. The resulting genomics and proteomics have contributed to better identifying new infectious diseases, understanding pathogenesis of current diseases, improving surveillance and diagnosis of diseases, as well as helping to clarify host susceptibility factors and host responses to infectious agents (Moore and Freehling 2002).

The data from such studies can be used to inform the development of drugs or vaccines (Morens and Fauci 2012). The complex interactions between disease-causing microbes and their hosts are being revealed through approaches that describe entire biological systems holistically (systems biology).

Recent appreciation of the sometimes beneficial role of communities of microorganisms dwelling in the gut, mouth, skin, and other niches has reshaped the standard notion of infectious diseases as a simple contest between virulent invading pathogens and the host immune system (Morens and Fauci 2012).

Increasingly, researchers, managers, and agency administrators find that they cannot work in isolation to solve the complex problems that arise in effective management of living organisms, their diseases, and the larger communities in which they live. It is essential that we diminish the barriers between agencies, specializations, and political divisions to draw on expertise and creativity to meet the many serious challenges to the health of wildlife, domestic animals, and humans, and to the integrity of the ecosystems on which all depend. There is a need for committed professionals to network with other skilled professionals to find creative and multidisciplinary solutions to the many challenges ahead.

Those of you with training in wildlife diseases will contribute to leading that cooperative effort! We appreciate your efforts to address the many topics covered, and we welcome your suggestions for enhancing the value of this text (botzler@sbcglobal.net or Richard. Brown@ humboldt.edu). Best wishes for your future work!

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Source: Botzler Richard G., Brown Richard N.. Foundations of Wildlife Diseases. University of California Press,2014. — 458 p.. 2014

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