International Journal of Animal and Wildlife Research

Vol. 1 No. 1 (2026): Volume 1, Issue 1 (2026)
Articles

Wildlife health, disease surveillance, emerging infectious diseases and zoonotic disease risks in wild animal populations

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Published 2026-10-18

Keywords

  • Wildlife health, disease surveillance, emerging infectious diseases, zoonotic spillover, One Health, pathogen ecology

Abstract

Background: Wild animal populations serve as reservoirs for a substantial share of pathogens capable of infecting humans and domestic animals, and intensifying anthropogenic pressure is bringing wildlife, livestock, and human communities into closer and more frequent contact.
Objective: This narrative review synthesises the scientific literature on wildlife health monitoring, disease surveillance systems, the ecological drivers of emerging infectious disease (EID) in wild animal populations, and the zoonotic risks these diseases pose to public health.
Methods: Peer-reviewed articles, systematic reviews, and institutional and governmental reports, largely published between 2012 and 2026, were identified through structured searches of biomedical, veterinary, and ecological literature and synthesised thematically; no primary data were collected. Results: Land-use change, climate-driven range redistribution, wildlife trade, and urbanisation emerge as principal drivers that reshape host communities and expand the human-wildlife-livestock interface at which spillover occurs. Case evidence drawn from bat-associated coronaviruses, the 2020-2024 clade 2.3.4.4b highly pathogenic avian influenza panzootic, and fungal wildlife diseases such as white-nose syndrome and chytridiomycosis illustrates both the zoonotic and the conservation dimensions of disease emergence in wildlife. Surveillance capacity remains geographically and technically uneven: passive carcass-based reporting, targeted sentinel-species sampling, genomic sequencing, and emerging environmental DNA (eDNA) tools offer complementary but unevenly resourced detection pathways.
Conclusion: Strengthening integrated, One Health-aligned wildlife disease surveillance, particularly in under-resourced high-risk regions, is essential to narrow the interval between pathogen emergence in wildlife and detection of spillover risk to humans and domestic animals.

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