Putting Theory into Practice: Wildlife Health in Conservation

Infectious and noninfectious diseases are being recognized by conservation biologists as an increasing challenge to the conservation of wildlife. The amplified role of diseases as a factor limiting species' survival can be traced to anthropogenic changes on a global scale that have direct and indirect influences on the health of wildlife species. These changes include human population growth, habitat fragmentation and degradation, the isolation of populations of species, and an increased proximity of humans (and their domestic animals) to wildlife. Further, some conservation projects have caused more harm than good by unwittingly introducing diseases to wildlife populations, whereas others have failed to meet their objectives because they did not take disease factors into consideration. Conservation biologists need to move quickly past the decades-old debate on the relative importance of wildlife health to conservation and begin using all the tools available to ensure the effectiveness of their efforts. We briefly review the literature on wildlife diseases, place wildlife health in the context of global changes affecting wild animal populations, and offer concrete suggestions for ways to integrate wildlife health sciences into conservation, such as including health assessment or monitoring programs and research on interspecies disease transmission in field biology projects, training wildlife professionals in the design and implementation of wildlife studies that incorporate health components, and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration. Our goal is to raise awareness that conservation biologists working in disciplines ranging from field biology to policy making have an important role to play in facilitating a transition toward a new conservation paradigm that includes wildlife health. This paradigm shift will take an academic understanding of the importance of wildlife disease and turn it into practical actions that will help conserve wildlife more effectively.