Improved Wildlife Health and Disease Surveillance through the Combined Use of Local Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge

• Main Author: Tomaselli, Matilde
• Other Authors: Checkley, Sylvia L., Kutz, Susan, Elkin, Brett, Ribble, Carl Steven, Gerlach, S. Craig
• Format: Doctoral or Postdoctoral Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Graduate Studies 2018
• Subjects: Local knowledge; Inuit knowledge; participatory epidemiology; participatory wildlfie health and disease surveillance; muskox; caribou; zoonoses; food safety; wildlife co-management; Forestry and Wildlife; Veterinary Science; Arctic; Cambridge Bay; inuit; ovibos moschatus
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1880/107597; https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/32779

Effective health and disease surveillance of wildlife populations is necessary for evidence-based wildlife management and conservation, as well as for the protection of human and animal health. Wildlife surveillance, however, is often challenging to undertake due to numerous limitations associated with gathering and interpreting field data from free-ranging populations. This thesis illustrates a novel approach to wildlife health surveillance which overcomes these limitations by capitalizing on the experiential-based knowledge of resource users documented with participatory methods and applied in combination with conventional surveillance methods. This participatory approach was developed and applied in – and with the active participation of – the community of Cambridge Bay in the Canadian Arctic to improve veterinary surveillance of muskoxen (Ovibos moschatus). In the North, harvesting muskoxen improves food security, the local economy and is connected to local indigenous culture and traditions. In Cambridge Bay, an accurate understanding of muskoxen health was urgently needed due to local concerns of possible declines and disease emergence. A participatory surveillance program composed of different activities which drew on both local knowledge and scientific knowledge was developed. Semi-structured interviews of key informants applied participatory epidemiology techniques to document local knowledge on muskox health, while scientific knowledge was generated by testing samples collected through collaboration with hunters, field investigations, and available archives. Local knowledge of key informants proved critical for filling historic and contemporary knowledge gaps on muskox health, including data on demography, morbidity, mortality and body condition, highlighting its potential to serve as an early warning system for detecting changes in wildlife health. Local knowledge informed the design of targeted scientific studies, and when combined the two knowledge systems reduced the overall uncertainty of the ...