Wildlife Health Information Sharing Partnership event reporting system (WHISPers) is a partner-driven repository for sharing basic information about historic and ongoing wildlife mortality and morbidity events involving five or more wild animals. The primary goal of the system is to provide natural resource management partners with timely, accurate information on where wildlife disease events are occurring or have occurred.
Active and passive (mortality-based) surveillance were used as tools to detect and monitor the recent introduction, spread, and resolution of outbreaks of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) that impacted wild birds and poultry in the U.S. and Canada. This study found that mortality-based opportunistic surveillance detected HPAI infections in wild birds at a higher rate than active surveillance of hunter-harvested birds. This indicates that opportunistic sampling of wild-bird carcasses submitted for cause-of-death investigation provides an efficient and cost-effective approach to monitoring for HPAI in wildlife.
Follow us for developments in wildlife health; links to journal articles that contain the scholarly work of USGS wildlife specialists; USGS Wildlife Health Bulletins and media releases; news concerning outbreaks of wildlife diseases, such as avian influenza; and news from the various USGS Science Centers that specialize in wildlife health.
USGS and a network of partners across the country document wildlife mortality events and perform pathogen surveillance, in order to provide timely and accurate information on locations, species, pathogen presence, and causes of death throughout the United States.
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