NORTH DAKOTA OUTDOORS MAGAZINE

Managing Wildlife Health

Ron Wilson

Stephanie Tucker, Game and Fish Department game management section leader, measures a mountain lion in the Department’s wildlife health lab.

We get a whiff of the deer before we see them.

It's not a horrible smell, but you know there are dead animals nearby.

The aroma's source is two white-tailed does temporarily housed in a big plastic tub with their legs pointing skyward and a young buck lying horizontal on a metal table.

The deer, it is expected, died of epizootic hemorrhagic disease, but that won't be known for certain until necropsies (defined as autopsies on animals) are performed later this September day.

“We kind of have the beginnings of what I would describe as smoldering EHD,” said Dr.

Charlie Bahnson, North Dakota Game and Fish Department wildlife veterinarian, of the naturally occurring virus spread by a biting midge that is often fatal to white-tailed deer, and less commonly to mule deer, pronghorn and elk.

“For about three weeks now we've had a trickle of reports coming in of deer suspected of dying of EHD.

Our hope, of course, is that this one just kind of stays localized and stays low grade.

But, again, that's why we ask the public to let us know because we try to keep track and decide if there's any sort of response and management that needs to happen.”

Investigations into these dead animals and others take place in the Game and Fish Department's wildlife health lab in Bismarck.

And at this time of year, with more hunting boots on the ground across North Dakota's rural landscape, reports of dead or dying animals typically increase.

“For the system to work, we rely on the eyes and ears of people out on the landscape.

And when they see sick or dead wildlife, they'll call us, field staff, or often a warden in the area,” Bahnson said.

Biologists working with pheasant in the lab

Not every animal that comes into the lab is dead. The facility is also used for wildlife management research projects for pheasants, turkeys and so on.

“And then we'll figure out what needs to happen next.

Does the animal need to be euthanized, or do we let nature takes its course? Does the carcass need to be brought in to do further investigation?”

And the size of the animal in question doesn't matter.

“The lab was designed to basically handle anything from a bull moose to something very small like, say, a bat,” Bahnson said.

A dead or sick moose euthanized in the field, for example, is loaded into a truck and backed into the lab upon arrival.

The animal is then hooked up to the lab's rail system and either moved into a walk-in freezer or placed on a necropsy table.

“We can efficiently and safely necropsy or break down that whole carcass and then decontaminate all surfaces when we're done,” Bahnson said.

A sample is taken from a turkey as part of a research project. The bird was later released into the wild.

“The lab's space is also adaptable, meaning we can move stuff around, make space, for example, for 3,000 deer heads that come in as part of our CWD surveillance efforts.”

The facility serves an important role for the agency and the public.

And it not just dead stuff that turns heads in the lab and stirs the interest of Bahnson and staff.

“We look for diseases or causes of mortality that might be important for human health, wildlife health and domestic animal health, which often have management implications,” Bahnson said siting examples such as pneumonia in bighorn sheep or influenza in birds.

“Beyond that, the wildlife health lab is also a space we use to support the Department in other capacities, like potential poaching cases.

We also use this space a lot for other wildlife management research projects for pheasants, turkeys, ducks … and anything else that might come down the pike for the Department.”

Bahnson said the lab is busy year-round, not just in fall.

Understandable, considering the potential risk a sick or dead animal may pose to humans or domestic livestock.

“Maybe there's a concern that this deer might have something that poses a risk to livestock.

Maybe it potentially has something that poses a risk to other wildlife in the area.

We actually deal with a lot of potential rabies cases where it's a neurologic raccoon or skunk, or anything else that potentially poses a risk to people in the area,” he said.

“Whatever that primary concern might be to people in the area, we bring the animal in to try to figure out what's going on and then interpret the implications, and relay that back out to folks and to livestock producers, while ultimately trying to do our best to manage the health of wildlife.”

Bahnson said that it's understood that wildlife health is one component of landscape health and human health.

It's all interrelated, tied together.

“And when you have breakdowns in health, that tends to manifest itself in disease or mortality.

We're kind of at the end of that signal, so if we have sick or dead animals showing up, we're trying to figure out what that means about that overall breakdown in health.

Our aim is to help inform the Department in figuring out how we can ultimately work toward better resilience and long-term health to benefit our landscapes, our wildlife, our domestic animals and, most importantly, the people in North Dakota.”

Dr. Charlie Bahnson investigates a young buck that likely died of epizootic hemorrhagic disease.

Back to the dead deer, Bahnson, with knife in hand, said he tries to perform a necropsy the same way every time, regardless of the suspected cause of death.

“I'll systemically open it up in the same way.

I'll systematically look at each organ.

But knowing that EHD is likely, I'll be looking at specific lesions,” he said.

“A lot of times there are patterns of how the lungs look, patterns of how the heart looks, which will strongly point us in a certain direction.

But to really confirm that it's EHD, we'll also collect samples of spleen and lung and send that off to a referral lab to verify that the virus is actually there.”

While EHD has a tendency to rear its ugly head every year somewhere in North Dakota, it's always a wonder what mystery that needs to be unraveled will land on the lab's metal tables.

“There are new, unique situations that pop up all the time.

You're never doing one thing for very long before the annual cycle continues to shift along,” Bahnson said.

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