Expanding National-Scale Wildlife Disease Surveillance Systems With Research Networks

Area of Science:

• Wildlife epidemiology
• Disease ecology
• Conservation medicine

Background:

• Standardized active surveillance across diverse ecological contexts is crucial for understanding wildlife disease dynamics.
• Landscape-scale targeted surveillance is essential for mechanistic insights into disease emergence, risk assessment, and predicting disease hotspots.
• Implementing such surveillance systems is challenging but vital for preparedness against novel zoonotic and wildlife-livestock diseases.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the development and rapid deployment of a landscape-scale targeted surveillance system for SARS-CoV-2 in free-ranging deer in the U.S.
• To collect data across individual, population, and landscape scales to understand SARS-CoV-2 transmission, evolution, and persistence.
• To leverage partnerships between public service sectors and academic researchers to establish a surveillance research network.

Main Methods:

• Development of a landscape-scale targeted surveillance network and sampling design.
• Rapid deployment of the surveillance system across the ranges of two free-ranging deer species.
• Adaptation of the sampling design in response to implementation challenges.

Main Results:

• Successful development and deployment of a landscape-scale targeted surveillance system for SARS-CoV-2 in deer.
• Identification of challenges encountered during the implementation of the intended sampling design.
• Summary of the adapted sampling design that has been implemented.

Conclusions:

• Strategies for successful deployment of landscape-scale targeted surveillance and research network operation were identified.
• The study provides a framework for constructing similar surveillance networks in the future.
• Analytical approaches for data derived from the sampling design are discussed.