Tracking down wildlife disease information

Listen to this article

Environmental attorneys and those interested in wildlife might benefit from this news. Earlier this month, the Wildlife Disease Information Node (WDIN), released the Global Wildlife Disease News Map. WDIN (a collaboration of UW-Madison, the National Wildlife Health Center, and the National Biological Information Infrastructure) is a network of online resources and services, which provide data and links to information on wildlife disease, such as chronic wasting disease or West Nile virus. The Disease Map is one of the services WDIN offers to help interested individuals stay current on wildlife disease issues.

The latest version of the Global Wildlife Disease News Map was just released. It is a dynamic tool that combines news stories and geographic mapping. The researcher can pinpoint news stories by topic, region, species, date, etc. The sources for the articles placed on the map come from the Wildlife Disease News Digest, a companion application to the Disease Map. The WDIN staff collects news stories from numerous sources throughout the world and brings them together into the Digest. From the Digest, articles related to disease spread and detection are selected, geo-coded and placed on the Disease Map For more information, please check out the news release.

Another interesting service of WDIN is the EPIZOO map which monitors mortality events in wildlife including migratory birds and endangered species.

Thanks to Cris Marsh, Content Manager at WDIN, for her assistance with this post.