WHISPers—Providing situational awareness of wildlife disease threats to the Nation—A fact sheet for the biosurveillance community

Abstract

Solutions for emerging infectious disease and bioterror threats can be improved by incorporating integrated biodefense strategies, including improved surveillance for animal and zoonotic diseases, strong national leadership, and effective management tools. Active biosurveillance for disease events is key to early detection, warning, and overall situational awareness and enables better communication, coordination, decision making, and data-driven responses. The national biosurveillance infrastructure has well-established channels for human and domestic animal health data through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and U.S. Department of Agriculture, and State, county, and local authorities. Wildlife disease information, however, has been more challenging to acquire and access, in part, due to the comparatively small infrastructure and resources dedicated to wildlife health and also because regulatory authority for wildlife and wildlife health is split among Federal, State, Tribal, and indigenous natural resource authorities. To address these issues, the Wildlife Health Information Sharing Partnership-event reporting system (WHISPers; https://whispers.usgs.gov ) was developed by the U.S. Geological Survey National Wildlife Health Center to promote collaboration and sharing of wildlife health information and to provide situational awareness and timely information about wildlife disease threats. WHISPers is a free science gateway and data portal that provides interactive query, display, reporting, and export capabilities for wildlife health event summary information.