Best practices for nuisance wildlife control operators in New York State

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Ch 4: Section four: What you need to know about wildlife diseases

Medically important or just media hype? (Some health concerns that affect NWCOs)

Consider this an introduction to some health concerns that affect NWCOs. For example, you'll often be cautioned to "wear a proper respirator." That's shorthand to alert you to the need to protect yourself from breathing in microscopic disease agents.

How much do you need to know? You're not a doctor, after all. You don't have to be able to throw around words like "sapro-zoonoses," but you do need to know enough to protect yourself and others, and to answer your customers' questions.

Sometimes our fears about these wildlife diseases are much greater than our actual risks of catching them, or the likely results of an infection. Even for an ethical NWCO who's not trying to sell a job by frightening customers with an overblown assessment of the risk of catching a wildlife disease, it can still be tricky to share the necessary information in the right context.

It's also important to resist jumping to conclusions. For example, distemper can cause symptoms that look like rabies. The only way to be sure is to test.

Some of these diseases are potentially fatal. That's something your customer will probably want to know—what's the worst case scenario? But the chance of catching most of these diseases is low, and even then, many of them are treatable.

The trick is to have good, complete, and credible information from a trusted source. One extremely valuable source for current and accurate information is the national Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Most of the pages on their website about wildlife-related health issues are written in simple language and get right to the point. The addresses of the websites that focus on each disease are included at the end of each description.

Other good sources for information about wildlife diseases include physicians; veterinarians; medical entomologists; the state's health, wildlife, and agriculture departments; trade magazines; professional organizations; wildlife conferences; books; fact sheets; videos; listserves; and websites. (See the appendix.)

One last medically-related point: When you remove wildlife from people's homes, it's also important to plan for the parasites that may be left behind. Birds and mammals are host to a variety of parasites including fleas, ticks, mites, lice, and bed bugs. Although these parasites generally prefer their original host species, if you remove those animals, the hungry parasites may enter the home looking for a meal. Many of these parasites will bite people and they can be extremely annoying. (And itchy customers are generally not happy, which isn't good for business.)

These pests may fly or crawl into the home through windows, ventilators, cracks, and crevices. Droppings, feathers, fur, food, and carcasses can also attract other pests such as flies and carpet beetles. This can be a significant problem if animals have died in inaccessible locations, such as in the walls. That can happen when an animal is poisoned, and it's one of the risks of using that management method.

Effective clean-up should remove any parasites present in the home. If a site is badly infested, you should wear protective clothing before entering. Even if you don't offer clean-up services, know how to properly advise your clients. Most states have an "integrated pest management" or "IPM" program, usually associated with the land grant university. (In New York, for example, that's Cornell University's "New York State Integrated Pest Management Program.") These programs offer information about how to deal with many pests, including the ones that fall off wildlife. IPM stresses a combination of practical, economical pest management methods that minimize the risks to people and the environment.

Now, on to the zoonoses. The zoonotic diseases that are potentially fatal for people are listed first. So, for example, we've listed hantavirus before mange, which a NWCO is far more likely to encounter, because hantavirus can become a much more serious health problem. At the tail end are two wildlife diseases that people generally encounter from contact with a "middleman," either a mosquito or tick.

There's a lot of information in this section. The next chart should help you remember the answers to three critical questions: who? what? how? Who's likely to transmit the disease to people. What disease. And how do people catch it.

Next Section (How do you protect yourself from wildlife diseases?)