Abstract
Clinical wildlife medicine has mostly been applied to wildlife rehabilitation which is defined as the temporary care of injured, diseased, and displaced indigenous animals and the subsequent release of healthy animals to appropriate habitat in the wild.5 Few have doubted the important role these activities have played in improving the welfare of many wild animals that are often injured as a result of human activities. However, it is unlikely that the rehabilitation of injured individuals of a common species has any significant effect at the population level.7 Therefore, legitimate questions have been raised regarding the justification of such activities and whether they could lead to interference in natural selection, increase disease transmission among and between species, and result in the inappropriate translocation of animals. The Wildlife Center of Virginia (WCV) has developed policies and procedures, health screening protocols,8 and a preventive medicine program that are designed to eliminate or minimize the potential harm that could result from wildlife rehabilitation. In addition, the WCV has expanded upon the traditional role of the treatment and release of wildlife to include many other veterinary scientific, conservation, public health, and public policy activities. Veterinary training is one of the most important justifications for our activities, and the WCV has training programs for veterinary students, veterinary interns, and veterinarians training to be specialists in wildlife medicine through an American College of Zoological Medicine approved residency program. These training programs emphasize clinical medicine, wildlife population health management, and conservation medicine, or the ecological context of health. Conservation medicine is a new discipline and has developed in response to the emergence of new diseases and threats to human and animal health from anthropogenic ecological changes.1 The WCV has been documenting anthropogenic effects on wildlife health for 20 yr and the animals presented to the WCV are used as biomonitors for ecosystem health.2 The WCV has also adapted the Epi Info software package as its disease-monitoring database.4 This database has allowed us to identify significant temporal changes in animal admissions, and spatial clustering of clinical cases.2,3 Wildlife can also serve as early warning indicators or sentinels of disease outbreaks in humans and domestic animals and a syndromic surveillance system is currently being developed. Finally, the WCV uses the clinical cases and research projects to educate the public, modify human behaviors that are detrimental to wildlife, and influence public policy decisions.6 The program outlined above is a potential model program for other wildlife centers and universities that receive wildlife in a clinical setting.
Literature Cited
1. Aguirre AA, RS Ostfeld, GM Tabor, C House, MC Pearl, eds. 2002. Conservation Medicine: Ecological Health in Practice. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pp. 1–407.
2. Brown JD, JM Sleeman. 2002. Morbidity and mortality of reptiles admitted to the Wildlife Center of Virginia, 1991–2000. J. Wildl. Dis. 38: 699–705.
3. Brown JD, JM Sleeman, F Elvinger. 2003. Epidemiologic determinants of aural abscessation in free-living eastern box turtles (Terrapene carolina) from Virginia. J. Wildl. Dis. 39: 918–921.
4. Centers for Disease Control Epidemiology Program Office. What is Epi Info? Available at https://www.cdc.gov/epiinfo/.
5. Miller EA. 2000. Minimum Standards for Wildlife Rehabilitation. 3rd ed. International Wildlife Rehabilitation Council/National Wildlife Rehabilitators Association. Pp. 1–67.
6. Porter SL. 1992. Role of the veterinarian in wildlife rehabilitation. J. Am. Vet. Med. Assoc. 200: 634–640.
7. Wobeser G. 1994. Investigation and Management of Disease in Wild Animals. New York, Plenum Press. Pp. 1–265.
8. Woodford MH. 2001. Quarantine and Health Screening Protocols for Wildlife Prior to Translocation and Release in to the Wild. Office International des Epizooties, Paris, France. Pp. 1–104.