Tackling avian influenza with automated detection for an early warning system

Background

The recent HPAI incursion in the U.S. has continued to spread rapidly among diverse wild and domestic birds and mammals, causing extensive economic and ecological harm. HPAI surveillance efforts lack resources and human personnel to effectively detect outbreaks in wild birds, most notably in waterfowl and other waterbirds. Waterfowl and waterbirds are known to be primary reservoirs and dispersers of HPAI, allowing extensive spread to other wild birds. This subsequent viral spread also increases the likelihood of potential spillover to commercial poultry and livestock (most recently dairy cows, swine, and humans). This project aims to develop automated surveillance approaches to detect infection in wild birds that are symptomatic or have died recently. Quickly and efficiently detecting HPAI in birds will save time, provide alerts to wildlife managers and the agricultural community, and help reduce disease spread and the risk of spillover to commercial poultry.

Approach and objectives

This team is led by Western Ecological Research Center (WERC) scientists collaborating with researchers in the Eastern Ecological Science Center (EESC), and Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study (SCWDS). The team extended current research applications in Movement Ecology to help federal, state, private, and NGO managers of wildlife habitats in the U.S to identify disease outbreaks. Using advanced GPS-cellular telemetry loggers to assess mortality of tagged birds, the team is developing methods and software to automatically identify abnormal behavior indicative of sickness or death of tagged birds. To deliver information to users, the team is enhancing its ability (for examples, see AIMS for Wildlife and Casazza and others 2023) to automatically report mortalities including GPS coordinates of dead birds to partner wildlife managers. We additionally collect suspected sick or dead birds for sampling and pathology testing by EESC and SCWDS to help validate our methods. This ability to immediately report sick or dead birds to managers in near real-time can help limit further spread of disease.

Mortality of waterbirds marked with telemetry (tracking) biologgers that are within 3 km² of publicly managed land, like national wildlife refuges and state wildlife areas, are reported to respective wildlife managers. This reporting disseminates GPS coordinates for each dead waterbird and allows wildlife managers to further investigate cause of death. Managers in turn can facilitate confirmatory identification of cause of death by helping to recover and submit birds for necropsy and mortality diagnosis to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center. Overall, rapid disease detection in wild birds by USGS will help to inform allocation of resources by wildlife managers in Department of Interior, state agencies, and of private lands, such as where and when to direct staff activities.

Acknowledgments: Partnerships for science-based risk management of disease

Managers of federal national wildlife refuges (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), state wildlife areas in California, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah, and private land in the western U.S., allowed access to their properties to capture and mark waterbirds with telemetry biologgers and helped collect dead marked birds for necropsy. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Central Valley Joint Venture, State agencies (California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Department of Water Resources, Nevada Department of Wildlife, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources wildlife agencies), Academic institutions (Tennessee Tech University, Louisiana State University Cooperative Unit, University of California-Davis), and non-governmental and private organizations (Ducks Unlimited, Inc, California Rice Commission, California Waterfowl Association, The Nature Conservancy) also were instrumental in supporting bird capture, data collection, and data sharing to facilitate our analysis and automation of weekly bird mortality reports. 

References

Casazza, M.L., Lorenz, A.A., Overton, C.T., Matchett, E.L., Mott, A.L., Mackell, D.A. and McDuie, F., 2023. AIMS for wildlife: Developing an automated interactive monitoring system to integrate real-time movement and environmental data for true adaptive management. Journal of environmental management, 345, p.118636. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118636 

Teitelbaum, C.S., Ackerman, J.T., Hill, M.A., Satter, J.M., Casazza, M.L., De La Cruz, S.E., Boyce, W.M., Buck, E.J., Eadie, J.M., Herzog, M.P., Matchett, E.L., Overton, C.T., Peterson, S.H., Plancarte, M., Ramey, A.M., Sullivan, J.D., and Prosser, D.J. Avian influenza antibody prevalence increases with mercury contamination in wild waterfowl. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 289(1982), p.20221312. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.1312