2015 Wildlife Disease Retrospective

Abstract

Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks is developing a Wildlife Health Program.  One of the functions of the program is to integrate disease surveillance, population health monitoring, and wildlife health diagnostic services to provide information to the public and wildlife professionals on the dynamics, risk, and impacts of disease in Montana’s wildlife.   The knowledge gained from this program is aimed at improving conservation efforts and the safety of both humans and domestic animals.  The Wildlife Health Laboratory is a statewide lab that receives hundreds to thousands of biological samples each year for disease surveillance projects, epidemiologic and morbidity investigations, and forensics.  An overview of notable zoonotic and non-zoonotic diseases detected from 2015 laboratory submissions will be discussed, providing relevance, repercussions and general background or recent history of the diseases in Montana.