NEAFWA 2018

AUTHORS: Jesse Morris, USDA, APHIS, Wildlife Services; Jordona D. Kirby, National Rabies Management Program, USDA, APHIS, Wildlife Services; Kathy Nelson, National Rabies Management Program, USDA, APHIS, Wildlife Services; Robin Dyer, USDA, APHIS, Wildlife Services; Richard B. Chipman, National Rabies Management Program, USDA, APHIS, Wildlife Services

ABSTRACT: Managing rabies in terrestrial wildlife populations protects human and animal health and significantly reduces the economic impact of the disease.  Since 1995, the USDA, APHIS, Wildlife Services (WS), National Rabies Management Program (NRMP) has worked cooperatively with local, state, and federal partners to manage rabies across large landscapes through the use of oral rabies vaccination (ORV) to prevent the spread of and ultimately eliminate specific terrestrial rabies variants.  In the eastern U.S. ORV distribution efforts focus on raccoon rabies management, and ORV zones are strategically placed relative to the geographic distribution of the rabies virus on the landscape.  Thus, monitoring the movement of raccoon rabies through enhanced rabies surveillance (ERS) as a complement to public health surveillance is a critical part of the program.  ERS involves active collection of strange acting, road killed, and nuisance wild animals that have not had any known exposures with humans or domestic pets.  From 2005-2017, WS collected >110,000 surveillance samples from 24 states and tested 82% with a field-based diagnostic test.  Fifteen of 24 states confirmed >2,300 rabid animals that would not have been tested through traditional public health surveillance.  In 2015, the NRMP began an initiative to improve existing ERS efforts with goals to increase sampling rigor, and to standardize practices and approaches among state programs.  Key components outlined in the initiative were: developing and expanding a cooperator-based networking matrix; and creating a sample categorization scheme to better quantify sampling efforts and emphasize collection of high priority specimens.  The Maine WS program served as a 2015 pilot state and increased their cooperative network 10-fold while almost doubling their sampling efforts during the first year.  Since 2015, Maine WS has maintained a broad network of wildlife professionals, public health specialists, law enforcement officers, and many other cooperators who continue to be a critical part of this ongoing project.  Since 2015, an average of about 74% of ERS samples have been obtained in Maine as a direct result of a network contact.  Additionally, nearly 97% of all ERS samples that tested positive by Maine WS originated from network cooperators.  The Wildlife Services’ rabies management program represents one of the largest coordinated landscape-level wildlife disease management programs in North America.  ERS perpetually improves as a result of continued outreach and collaboration among other wildlife professionals and will remain critical to program success.