A new paper exploring the history and ongoing challenges of wildlife health surveillance has been published by a team from the RVC and APHA. Wildlife health surveillance plays a vital role in the early detection of emerging diseases, helping to protect human health, safeguard domestic animals, and conserve wildlife populations. The paper traces the development of wildlife health surveillance in England and Wales over the past three decades. It highlights key challenges associated with monitoring wildlife—such as limited data on population sizes and the huge range of wild species to be monitored—and discusses practical solutions to address some of these issues. Importantly, the authors identify lessons learnt throughout the programme’s evolution, offering insights that will be valuable to anyone involved in developing or evaluating wildlife health surveillance systems, both in the UK and internationally.

The paper is open access and available to download here: Lessons learnt from the history and development of a national wildlife health surveillance scheme in England and Wales.