Arizona WildAlert

We are excited to announce that The Wild Neighbors Database Project has recently been awarded a grant contract to create a WildAlert platform specific to the state of Arizona. This system, in partnership with the University of California, Davis and EpiEcos, will be created and launched by September 2024.

WildAlert, formerly known as the Wildlife Morbidity and Mortality Event Alert System, integrates pre-diagnostic data in near real-time from wildlife rehabilitation organizations to enable early and enhanced detection of unusual wildlife health events (Kelly et al. 2021). WildAlert runs in parallel to WRMD and is currently active in California. WildAlert is being scaled to other states due to its demonstrated effectiveness and efficiency in alerting to events associated with both common diseases as well as emerging threats and has proven capability for early detection of shared health threats in wildlife populations.

This project aims to leverage an active network of wildlife rehabilitation organizations in Arizona to enhance early detection of wildlife morbidity and mortality events and increase situational awareness of health threats across the state.

Development of the Arizona WildAlert platform will incorporate feedback from the Arizona Department of Game and Fish to ensure the utility of the system for enhanced wildlife disease surveillance.

We are excited to undertake this project and look forward to bringing the WildAlert system to additional states in the future.

Literature Cited:

Kelly, T.R, P.S. Pandit, N. Carion, D.F. Dombrowski, K.H. Rogers, S.C. McMillin, D.L. Clifford, A. Riberi, M.H. Ziccardi, E.L. Donnelly-Greenan, C. Johnson. 2021. Early detection of wildlife morbidity and mortality through an event-based surveillance system. Proc.R.Soc.B.288:20210974.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0974.