milton friend 5

A Half Century in Wildlife Biology

Milton Friend, con’t

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It’s not in the best interest of most host / agent relationships to kill the host. But it is for some. There’s a full spectrum. Microbes have all kinds of adaptive capabilities to survive. They’re in a battle for survival, not in a battle to do destruction. And we are continually giving new opportunities for microbes to advance their situations. The relationships between microbes and hosts are so complex and so difficult to understand ecologically that we tend to view them from a very primitive perspective: a singular cause and effect relation. In fact, we’re dealing with multiplicity of interactions among multiplicity of agents and hosts. Look at the ecological situations in China where various kinds of species suitable for transferring diseases to humans -- and vice-versa -- are brought into close proximity. Ultimately, we will have to change our behavior through legal mandate because people aren’t going to do it voluntarily. It’s very complicated because of the economic implications. Aquaculture is totally out of control as a disease situation. And non-traditional -- call it alternative – agriculture tries to hide among the cracks of bureaucracy, so that it won’t have rules imposed upon it. Domestic animals all started from wildlife, okay? They all have a wildlife origin. When they were brought into captivity they brought their diseases, and those diseases have been dealt with. But we only have a handful of domestic animals. We refuse to ask the question: “If I take this domestic species and I bring it into a wild habitat, what might it give to wildlife and what might it get from the wildlife?” We have a lot of information the ecology of diseases of domestic animals and humans. We have very minimal information about the wildlife diseases and their ecology. CHANGING ECOLOGIES Animal life, like everything else, is a continuum with change. Take the Canada goose, which in my youth was a symbol of wildness I looked for twice a year, during the Spring and Fall migrations. The Canada goose is now a “domestic” species with non-migratory urban populations. It is still Branta canadensis, okay? The point is we’ve created an environment that has changed the habits of the animal. And in changing the habit of the animal, we are open to new set of issues. Look at deer. Or wild turkeys. We see them wandering all over town here in the Spring. And black bears have become a major problem in Western Massachusetts. A species that requires a large blocks of habitat to sustain itself will die out because of habitat fragmentation. We’re going to end up with far fewer species, but ones that are more adaptable to the human-altered environment.
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The exotic pet situation runs the gamut. My concern is more than the replacement of native species by an exotic species. My concern is also that the human populations these animals are interfacing with is also changing in terms of age structure and immune capabilities. A lot of diseases have – I hate to use the term “density dependent” – but they cannot sustain themselves without having a minimum number of susceptible hosts. So you can bring in a pathogen but because there aren’t enough susceptible hosts to keepthe disease cycle going, it dies out. The immuno-suppressed people were always there. These disease agents were always there, or a lot of them were there. But they were in self-limiting situations. Now these pools of potential human hosts are growing and growing. And because of the speed in which we now move animals, historic safeguards aren’t as reliable. It’s an explosive situation. THE NATIONAL WILDLIFE HEALTH CENTER The Duck plague outbreak in 1973 occurred six months after the Fish & Wildlife Service made an internal decision to eliminate its existing wildlife disease capabilities, which were minimal, because of budget constraints. Then a political situation developed when 40% of the mallards at a national wildlife refuge died from an exotic disease and nobody was in charge. And nobody was in charge because as an exotic disease, Agriculture was in charge. But because it was a wild bird, it was a Fish & Wildlife Service’ responsibility. Now you have to look at this from the context of where the Fish & Wildlife Service came from, which was Agriculture -- the Bureau of Biological Survey. And why did it become the Fish & Wildlife Service? Well, the Bureau of Biological Survey was in charge the national wildlife refuges before they were really national wildlife refuges. But it’s a conflict. It was in business to promote agriculture, not conservation. So when you had conflict between the conservation of species and advancing agriculture, things fell apart. Agriculture was working with wildlife disease, but they were working on wildlife that was raised in captivity: game birds, waterfowl, stuff like that. There was very little being done in terms of dealing with animals actually out in the wild. That fell to the Fish & Wildlife Service. But the Fish & Wildlife Service had minimal disease work going on, mostly dealing with botulism. And they tried to phase that out. As a result of the public outcry, a committee was put together to evaluate the situation and make recommendations. It came back and said that the Fish & Wildlife Service was responsible for the stewardship of these birds. Agriculture had its own areas of responsibility. Public Health had its own areas of responsibility. This was a Fish & Wildlife problem. So I was asked to put together a concept document for a wildlife health center -- which was the same one that was thrown in the basket at a meeting that was held six months earlier, when they said we’re getting rid of this kind of activity.

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I had two years to prove that this program had merit and was given almost no money: $440,000 to pay for salaries, operations, and everything else. That was calculated on the basis of the salaries of the people who were being brought here from existing programs and the project money they had. We had no facilities. We had nothing. And if it had not been for the University of Wisconsin, we wouldn’t have made it. The University was selected through a competitive evaluation process. I traveled across the country looking for facilities that would be interested in taking us in and working with us. Most saw the federal government as a piggy bank. The University of Wisconsin saw a neat program and shook my hand. Basically, the university carried us rent-free until we could get on our feet. They did a lot of our lab work. The lab started with three people initially: myself, a secretary and a virologist. Other people came on board in the next few months as they were transferred here. But it was a long struggle. Duck plague was the research focus. But there is no way in two years that you can
prove your worth on the basis of research. If you’re going to prove your worth, you have to provide services for people, so that if those services disappear, those people will be hurting. One of the advantages I believe I had, in addition to being in the right place at the right time, was being cross-trained in veterinary science and wildlife ecology. I was a working wildlife biologist. I was a working wildlife disease specialist. I had formal credentials in both. And because of my background, I understood what wildlife was all about to a land management agency. Remember, the Fish & Wildlife Service was responsible for the stewardship for the wildlife under its jurisdiction. That means the care and nurturing for future generations. And the people that make that happen are the people on the ground: the refuge managers, the law enforcement agents, the people who daily are confronted with situations. They are the first to see dead animals. They are the ones who have to figure out what to do. So my focus became diagnostic activities to help them.
So the telephone would ring – I was the only one here -- and I would talk to the person about the situation and, if warranted, I would get on a plane. I could provide immediate assistance, doing post mortems in the field. I was training and showing those people: “Here’s what I see. Here’s what I think it is. Here are the recommendations I would make for you.” I was like a doctor making house calls.

In the early years there was a lots of botulism. Then avian cholera became a major issue. Then I would take the parts and other carcasses and I would fly back here. I would go downstairs in Veterinary Sciences and I would do the post mortems, then I would take all the pieces and run upstairs to do my microbiology and virology. I would do whatever I could. I would farm stuff off to people. And then I would be right back on the telephone to that person in the field. I developed a rapport with people who for years and years didn’t have anybody to turn to. They knew they could call whatever time of night, or day of the week. They all had my telephone number. I had many vacations that didn’t happen because I was going out the door when somebody had an event. The year before I started the lab here, the Nebraska Fish & Game department asked me to give a wildlife disease workshop. This was in Kearney, which is on the Platte River, which is a migration staging area for cranes and waterfowl. When I started talking about avian cholera, I said, “It’s not a matter of if you’re going to get this disease, it’s when, and how are you going to deal with it.” And the very next spring was the first outbreak of avian cholera in Nebraska.

There had been outbreaks in Texas and other places to the south in chickens and turkeys, but we had no proof it could be carried by wild birds. The Platte River staging area is like the constriction of an hour-glass. The birds come up and then they fan out. Anyhow, next year, there it was and not only did we have cholera in the waterfowl, but we had eight whooping cranes from Aransas land in the middle of the outbreak– there were only 44 alive in the world at the time. We had permits in hand and planes to move them off.

Cholera took off from that point. It went from a springtime disease to an all-year disease.

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