University of Pennsylvania helps state wildlife

At no time in history has disease posed more problems for wildlife and its conservation. 

• White-Nose Syndrome has killed 99 percent of most cave-bat species.

• Chronic Wasting Disease continues to spread to new parts of Pennsylvania, infecting and killing deer and threatening hunting tradition.

• West Nile virus has left Pennsylvania’s state bird, the ruffed grouse, with an uncertain future.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission (PGC) and Penn Vet 
have formed a partnership to address those problems head-on.

The Pennsylvania Wildlife Futures Program, a science-based, wildlife health program serves to increase disease surveillance, management and research to better protect wildlife across the Commonwealth.

For hunters who submit samples from deer they harvest for chronic wasting disease (CWD) testing, the partnership will provide much faster turnaround for test results – about seven to 10 days as opposed to weeks or sometimes months – as well as the ability to track test results online.

The Pennsylvania Wildlife Futures Program will dedicate 12 employees, one of them working full-time out of the Game Commission’s Harrisburg headquarters, to addressing wildlife diseases. Benefits include:

• The ability to better define wildlife diseases, their impacts, and how we can manage them

• Freeing up agency biologists to spend more time focusing on managing wildlife populations

• The coordination of disease responses across agencies, our hunting community, and the general public