Abstract
Wildlife is intentionally and unintentionally translocated regularly carrying with it a range of parasites and pathogens. There are numerous examples of disease outbreaks originating from translocated animals. Managers of conservation projects, which involve translocating wildlife have a responsibility to protect humans, domestic animals, other wildlife and the ecosystem from negative effects of disease carried by the focus species. There is a significant lack of data available on the susceptibility, epidemiology and impacts of pathogens in wildlife populations making preventative actions challenging. Risk analysis has been developed to provide an objective, repeatable, transparent and documented assessment of the risks posed by a course of action. Standardised techniques have been developed and are utilised routinely to aid decision making. It is a tool used to guide policy making and disease control planning by governments and international organisations such as the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health). Qualitative risk analysis is particularly useful in fields when quantitative data is lacking. Risk analysis has been developed for use in animal health risk management and subsequently adapted for wildlife disease management scenarios, cumulating in publication of the OIE/IUCN Manual of Procedures for Wildlife Disease Risk Analysis (2014). This paper considers further modification of risk analysis methods for wildlife translocations undertaken for conservation purposes. The challenges of these specific scenarios including hazard identification, multiple epidemiological pathways and data gaps are addressed and tools which could improve the usefulness of the technique, such as developing scenario trees and rating uncertainty are proposed.
Highlights
Risk analysis processes have been developed to provide an objective, repeatable, transparent and documented assessment of the risks posed by a course of action or chain of decisions
The Zoological Society of London’s Disease Risk Analysis and Health Surveillance (DRAHS) project has been operating for 25 years, in partnership with Natural England and non-governmental organisations, to assess and respond to disease risks associated with interventions undertaken for the national Species Recovery Programme for native wildlife
As the approach has developed and diversified, a more specific disease focused definition was proposed by Jakob-Hoff et al (2014) who stated that disease risk analysis is a structured, evidence-based process that can help in decision making in the face of uncertainty and determine the potential impact of infectious and noninfectious diseases on ecosystems, wildlife, domestic animals and people
Summary
Risk analysis processes have been developed to provide an objective, repeatable, transparent and documented assessment of the risks posed by a course of action or chain of decisions. Standardised techniques have been developed and are utilised routinely to aid decision making by governments and international organisations such as the OIE (World Organisation for Animal Health) in assessing the risk from disease to humans, domestic animals and wildlife. Wildlife managers and decision makers are increasingly adopting these processes to aide management of disease threats to conservation interventions, such as reintroductions, rehabilitation and release or wild-to-wild translocations. This paper reviews approaches to disease risk analysis in wildlife translocation projects addressing reasons for undertaking assessments, potential sources of information and personnel involved. The Zoological Society of London’s Disease Risk Analysis and Health Surveillance (DRAHS) project has been operating for 25 years, in partnership with Natural England and non-governmental organisations, to assess and respond to disease risks associated with interventions undertaken for the national Species Recovery Programme for native wildlife. Our experience from conducting these disease risk analyses is used to describe the limitations of the analysis and propose some methods to respond to these difficulties
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