Wildlife Disease Surveillance

Multiple research endeavors at the USGS National Wildlife Health Center are ongoing to help assess the possible impacts of SARS-CoV-2 on wildlife.

The first 2021/2022 detection of Eurasian strain (EA) highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 in North America occurred in December 2021 in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Subsequently, HPAI EA H5 and EA H5N1 viruses have been confirmed in wild birds, backyard flocks, commercial poultry facilities, and wild mammals in both Canada and the United States. This HPAI distribution map will be...

Professionals at the NWHC include wildlife biologists, veterinarians, statisticians, epidemiologists, and informatics specialists. This multidisciplinary group conducts investigations and disease ecology studies of emerging and recurring priority wildlife diseases, maintains and analyzes comprehensive information on wildlife disease events, and provides response and management consultation and...

The Disease Decision Analysis and Research group is a multi-disciplinary team based out of the Eastern Ecological Science Center whose strengths are in ecology, decision sciences and quantitative modeling.

Below are the USGS 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) research projects related to COVID-19 pathways and wildlife dynamics. Select tabs above for related items.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) was signed into law on March 27th, 2020, to aid response efforts and ease the economic impact of COVID-19. The Department of the Interior received funds to “prevent, prepare for, and response to coronavirus, domestically or internationally including, “biosurveillance of wildlife and environmental persistence studies.” The USGS...

Instructions for reporting wildlife morbidity/mortality and submitting specimens to the USGS National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC).

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is known to infect and cause severe disease, such as respiratory distress and death, in mustelids, including farm-raised mink ( Mustela  lutreola and  Neovison  vison) and domestic ferrets ( M. putorius). This raised concern that the virus may also pose a threat to endangered black-footed ferrets ( Mustela nigripes) managed in captivity for breeding and recovery purposes.

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a fatal disease that impacts populations of deer, elk, moose, and other cervid species caused by an infectious protein called a prion.

The National Wildlife Health Center produces quarterly wildlife mortality reports, containing information about wildlife mortality events throughout the United States and on occasion across North America.

WARC researchers used visual encounter surveys to determine prevalence rates of snake fungal disease in south-central Louisiana.

The U.S. Geological Survey Amphibian Research Monitoring Initiative (ARMI) is using a combination of swabbing, non-lethal tissue sampling, soil and water sampling, and collection of a variety of other environmental variables to determine the relationships between the prevalence and pathogen load of Bd infection and environmental stressors on green treefrog survival.