Brucellosis in Yellowstone Bison Implications for Conservation Management

Treanor, John; Wallen, Richard; Maehr, David; Crowley, Phil

Wildlife conservationists have traditionally identified habitat loss as the primary cause of species decline. The expansion of humans into declining habitat has also resulted in an increasing number of infectious diseases shared by wildlife, domestic animals, and humans. Impacts to human health, resulting from animal diseases transmissible to humans, have become an additional obstacle to wildlife conservation. Because these emerging diseases pose a threat to public health, disease management efforts are largely focused on controlling infection and outbreaks in the wildlife hosts. The difficulty and cost of eradicating infectious agents from wildlife reservoirs have resulted in methods such as intensive culling practices that are largely unacceptable to the concerned public. This problem exposes a need for acceptable approaches that combine wildlife conservation with concerns over the health of humans and domestic animals. Suitable approaches, however, are often few and far between. In Yellowstone National Park (YNP), wildlife managers have been dealing with the disease brucellosis in YNP bison for decades. Brucellosis in YNP bison is a problem that demonstrates the challenges of addressing an infectious disease established in a wildlife species of conservation concern (Plumb et al. 2007).

Brucellosis in Yellowstone Bison Implications for Conservation Management

Series