The National Wildlife Disease Database (NWDD) is a congressionally funded USGS tool that integrates multi-jurisdictional wildlife disease data with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities to provide situational awareness, detect unusual disease events, and support early warning and data-driven decision-making.
What is the NWDD?
The NWDD maps wildlife disease occurrences across the U.S. through time and provides context for assessing disease patterns and potential impacts across jurisdictions. Built for state, federal, and Tribal agencies, NWDD brings disparate data sources together to create a national picture of wildlife disease trends, locations, risks, and impacts.
NWDD is developed and supported by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
What is the value?
No single agency holds all the data necessary to provide a full picture of wildlife diseases on the landscape or to use that data to assess risks and predict disease impacts across sectors. Wildlife regularly crosses jurisdictions, but the data collected by state, federal, and Tribal entities is generally limited to their own boundaries and often accessible only to the originating agency. Integrating and analyzing this multisource data for trends and anomalies across jurisdictions yields a more complete picture of where and when diseases occur, provides early warnings of health threats, and supports data-driven decisions.
What data is included?
NWDD integrates wildlife disease data from state and federal morbidity and mortality investigations, veterinary diagnostic laboratories, surveillance and research programs, wildlife rehabilitation records, and public or open-source reports. Data may include reports of sick or dead wildlife—including location, species, date, clinical signs, and cause of death when known—along with disease-specific positive and negative test results, diagnostic findings, and species range information. Data visibility in NWDD is controlled by the contributing agency, facilitating data sharing while also allowing privacy as needed.
NWDD also aligns with broader data standardization efforts: its Explorer tool brings together mapping, search and filter, event details, and a news feed, while its Dashboards provide insight by species, location, disease, and time.
Who can contribute?
NWDD is built for state, federal, and Tribal government agencies and their close collaborators with wildlife and One Health interests. The password-protected platform is available only to registered users; neither the platform nor its data are publicly available.
Data contribution is encouraged but not required for participation. NWDD accepts multiple data formats and data can be submitted as-is; revising or reformatting data is not required before submission, as the system itself will standardize key fields. At minimum, submitted records should include the organization, animal species and condition, location, and date. Contributing organizations control location resolution, including exact locations, an 11.1-km grid, or county-level data.
Who does it benefit?
NWDD benefits a range of natural resource, agricultural, and public health partners. For USGS and DOI, NWDD data and analytic resources support national, regional, and field staff, including the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Health Programs and individual parks and refuges. State and Tribal partners benefit from a broader perspective on wildlife disease occurrence and risks to inform decision-making. For more information about our partners, click here.
What’s next?
Rollout of the NWDD beta working prototype is scheduled for fall 2026. The prototype will be available to partners that contributed data and provided input during initial development. Full roll-out to all participants is scheduled for June 2027.
Want to dive deeper into the National Wildlife Disease Database? Visit our geonarrative here.
For more information and to learn more about how to participate in NWDD, contact NWDD@pnnl.gov.
The National Wildlife Disease Database (NWDD) is a congressionally funded USGS tool that integrates multi-jurisdictional wildlife disease data with advanced artificial intelligence capabilities to provide situational awareness, detect unusual disease events, and support early warning and data-driven decision-making.
What is the NWDD?
The NWDD maps wildlife disease occurrences across the U.S. through time and provides context for assessing disease patterns and potential impacts across jurisdictions. Built for state, federal, and Tribal agencies, NWDD brings disparate data sources together to create a national picture of wildlife disease trends, locations, risks, and impacts.
NWDD is developed and supported by the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
What is the value?
No single agency holds all the data necessary to provide a full picture of wildlife diseases on the landscape or to use that data to assess risks and predict disease impacts across sectors. Wildlife regularly crosses jurisdictions, but the data collected by state, federal, and Tribal entities is generally limited to their own boundaries and often accessible only to the originating agency. Integrating and analyzing this multisource data for trends and anomalies across jurisdictions yields a more complete picture of where and when diseases occur, provides early warnings of health threats, and supports data-driven decisions.
What data is included?
NWDD integrates wildlife disease data from state and federal morbidity and mortality investigations, veterinary diagnostic laboratories, surveillance and research programs, wildlife rehabilitation records, and public or open-source reports. Data may include reports of sick or dead wildlife—including location, species, date, clinical signs, and cause of death when known—along with disease-specific positive and negative test results, diagnostic findings, and species range information. Data visibility in NWDD is controlled by the contributing agency, facilitating data sharing while also allowing privacy as needed.
NWDD also aligns with broader data standardization efforts: its Explorer tool brings together mapping, search and filter, event details, and a news feed, while its Dashboards provide insight by species, location, disease, and time.
Who can contribute?
NWDD is built for state, federal, and Tribal government agencies and their close collaborators with wildlife and One Health interests. The password-protected platform is available only to registered users; neither the platform nor its data are publicly available.
Data contribution is encouraged but not required for participation. NWDD accepts multiple data formats and data can be submitted as-is; revising or reformatting data is not required before submission, as the system itself will standardize key fields. At minimum, submitted records should include the organization, animal species and condition, location, and date. Contributing organizations control location resolution, including exact locations, an 11.1-km grid, or county-level data.
Who does it benefit?
NWDD benefits a range of natural resource, agricultural, and public health partners. For USGS and DOI, NWDD data and analytic resources support national, regional, and field staff, including the National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Wildlife Health Programs and individual parks and refuges. State and Tribal partners benefit from a broader perspective on wildlife disease occurrence and risks to inform decision-making. For more information about our partners, click here.
What’s next?
Rollout of the NWDD beta working prototype is scheduled for fall 2026. The prototype will be available to partners that contributed data and provided input during initial development. Full roll-out to all participants is scheduled for June 2027.
Want to dive deeper into the National Wildlife Disease Database? Visit our geonarrative here.
For more information and to learn more about how to participate in NWDD, contact NWDD@pnnl.gov.