WS protects U.S. residents and visitors from 

 threats to human health and safety arising 

 from wildlife-borne diseases, wildlife 

 collisions with aircraft and automobiles, and 

 other hazards caused by wildlife. 



Increasing conflicts between deer populations 

 and expanding suburban development have 

 resulted in increased requests for WS 



assistance from State wildlife agencies, 

 residential communities, airports, businesses, 

 and individual property owners. In many 

 suburban areas across the country, expanding 

 deer herds and human populations are 

 resulting in automobile-deer collisions, safety 

 hazards at airports, and concerns over the 

 transmission of Lyme disease to people. WS 

 continued a successful deer conflict manage- 



ment program in a large residential community 

 on Skidway Island in Georgia and imple- 

 mented a similar program in a residential area 

 near Charleston, SC. 



Disease Surveillance and Control 



WS serves a crucial role in the area of disease 

 surveillance. Wildlife-borne diseases spread 

 by birds and mammals through direct and 

 indirect contact pose a threat to humans, pets, 

 and domestic livestock. To protect human 

 interests, WS personnel provided both direct 

 and technical assistance in FY 1999 to 

 suppress wildlife-borne diseases including 

 rabies, plague, Lyme disease, histoplasmosis, 

 and bovine tuberculosis. 



The most active disease WS surveillance and 

 control efforts in 1999 were conducted to slow 

 the spread of rabies. The WS role in these 

 efforts includes distribution of bait and 

 collection of information on rabies vector 

 populations and surveillance samples to 

 evaluate program effectiveness. Rabies in 

 coyotes and foxes in Texas and raccoons in 

 the Northeast have emerged as significant 

 public health and wildlife management 

 problems. The social and financial costs 

 associated with rabies increase dramatically as 



wildlife become infected in new or broader 

 geographic regions of the United States. The 

 WS Wildlife Rabies Management Team, 

 formed in 1999, coordinated cooperative 

 rabies programs in Ohio, New York, Texas, and 

 Vermont. The primary cooperators include the 

 State health departments, Cornell University, 

 CDC, University of Georgia (Southeastern 

 Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study), 

 University of Wyoming, Ontario Ministry of 

 Natural Resources, and the respective State 

 wildlife agencies. 



Canine Rabies— WS continued to provide 

 assistance to the Texas Department of Health 

 in 1999 in an effort to halt the spread of canine 

 rabies in South Texas. The cooperative Texas 

 Oral Rabies Vaccination Project was imple- 

 mented in 1995 using available APHIS 

 contingency funding in an attempt to contain 

 the epizootic and reduce human exposure. A 

 96-percent reduction in canine rabies has 

 been reported in Texas since the first oral 



vaccine airdrop in South Texas in 1995. 

 Results from surveillance programs conducted 

 in March 1999 have shown that more than 70 

 percent of coyotes tested from South Texas 

 were positive for the biomarker included in the 

 bait material, and more than 89 percent tested 

 from the primary surveillance area have shown 

 evidence of immune response to the vaccine. 

 Canine rabies cases in South Texas have 

 declined from 166 reported in 1994 to 7 in 

 1998 and 8 from mid-March through 

 November 1999. Similar success has been 

 observed in the gray fox, with the number of 

 rabies cases reported dropping from 188 in 

 1995 to 43 in 1998 and 42 from mid-March 

 through November 1999. Even with increases 

 reported in gray fox populations in 1998 and 

 1999, a positive serologic response to the 

 vaccine was detected in 70 percent of foxes 

 tested in 1999, and 52 percent tested positive 

 for the bait biomarker. A total of 2.7 million 

 rabies vaccine baits were distributed over a 

 42,000-square-mile area in South Texas 

 involving 198 aerial bait drop operations. 





