Who we are
The Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative is a collection of highly qualified people within a cross-Canada network of partners and collaborators dedicated to wildlife health. Our Cooperative includes internationally renowned wildlife disease diagnosticians and researchers, experts in population health, skilled educators and experienced policy advisors. The CWHC is dedicated to generating knowledge needed to assess and manage wildlife health and working with others to ensure that knowledge gets put to use in a timely fashion.
At the core of the CWHC is a partnership linking Canada's five veterinary colleges and the British Columbia Animal Health Centre. Branching from that core is a network that stretches into the public and private sectors that allows us to access critical expertise needed to detect and assess wildlife health issues and make sure our results find their way to people who need to make decisions on wildlife management, wildlife use, public health and agriculture.
Mission and Purpose
Our Mission
We create and use science-based knowledge, services, and solutions to promote wildlife health as a foundation for One Health, for the benefit of Canadian society and the environment.
Our Purpose
The CWHC exists to advance the health of Canadian wildlife, recognizing wildlife health as central to maintaining sustainable relationships among wildlife, humans, domestic animals, and the environment we share.
Read more on our blog.
What we are doing
We provide a Canada-wide perspective on wildlife health at the same time as helping to identify and assess emerging problems at a local level. The CWHC facilitates and supports teams, programs and partnerships needed to meet this goal. We build capacity through training the next generation of experts and advocating for strategic investment in wildlife health. Our research creates new wildlife health information and identifies ways to translate that knowledge into action. All of these activities work toward the goal of creating awareness of the importance of wildlife health and providing credible and trustworthy information to affect positive change at a local, national and international level.
Data Management
OUR EXPERTISE
CWHC professionals have fulfilled a criticial role in protecting Canadian public health, agriculture, food safety and the conservation of wildlife for over two decades. We connect a network of highly qualified professionals from science, technology, and policy-development in order to meet this need. Our database is the foundational aspect of this network and is a custom-built system designed and maintained by a team of wildlife health and information technology professionals.
OUR DATABASE
A standardized, stable database a critical component of any Health Information Management system as it provides a key tool in storing data in a uniform, centralized manner. It is one of the cornerstones of any organization’s capacity to deliver critical information to stakeholders in a timely manner as it facilitates the transformation of data into knowledge which allows effective decision making and policy definition. The database records mortality events, their environmental circumstances and locations, and associated animals along with testing and disease outcome information and a comprehensive cause-of-death coding system.The CWHC Database helps organizations increase their efficiency, effectiveness, and offers enhanced operational functionality in many ways.
Influencing Policy and Practice
The CWHC is a trusted partner in wildlife health, being sought after to facilitate and lead national plans and local strategies, enable and support program design, evolution and coordination, and provide expert advice and leadership on some of the most pressing and perplexing wildlife disease issues confronting Canada.
A key role of the CWHC is to provide evidence and expertise to support policy and decision making to ensure: a safe, secure, sustainable Canada; market access; transparent, accountable and responsive programs; sustained economic and cultural opportunities; and international engagement.
The full spectrum of CWHC activities are incorporated in support of this key role, from discovery and information gathering to knowledge mobilization to facilitation and advocacy. For instance CWHC members contribute to numerous working groups and committees: representing Canada at international meetings, serving as national sources of expertise and supporting management programs. CWHC produces risk assessments, knowledge reviews, policy assessment and research that informs policy and practice. This includes being an OIE Collaborating Centre that builds international wildlife health capacity that subsequently reduces external risks to Canada.
Given the role and reputation of the CWHC as a trusted and neutral knowledge broker, the CWHC facilitates and enables teams to turn knowledge into management action. Based on its position and partnerships, the CWHC serves as a focal point to coordinate and link federal, provincial and territorial programs, priorities and information. This includes our role as a spearhead, a secretariat and facilitator of national strategies and plans to address wildlife health challenges. The national strategies for White Nose Syndrome (WNS) and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) are two examples.
Further examples at the program level include Canada's National Avian Influenza Surveillance program for wild birds, conceptualized, designed and lead by the CWHC this program is intended to identify gaps in national capacity for situational awareness regarding pandemic risk levels and detection of novel Avian Influenza strain incursions.
In addition to a CWD national strategy, the CWHC was also first to detect cases of CWD in the wild in Canada. Moving from detection and surveillance the CWHC identified and conducted priority research identify spread and risks, and finally facilitated and lead international working group and helped to develop the national strategy.
Similarly, the CWHC response to WNS, a devastating disease of North American bats, ranged from the diseases first detection in Canada to include ongoing tracking, to a coordinated and harmonized national approach to encourage change.
Partners
The CWHC partnership was established in 1992 with leadership from Environment and Climate Change Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Directors, and with additional financial assistance from the Max Bell Foundation.
The following organizations support the core CWHC program, namely Canada's National Wildlife Disease Surveillance Program as well as informational and educational programs designed for students, partner agencies and the public. Sponsorship included four Government of Canada agencies: Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, Parks Canada, and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The partnership also included all provincial and territorial governments, representing Fish & Wildlife, Environment, Agriculture and Health. Additional partners were: the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Guelph, the University of Montreal, the University of Prince Edward Island, the University of Calgary, as well as the Canadian Wildlife Federation.
The CWHC responds to several important wildlife disease issues with targeted programs of enhanced surveillance, research and participation in the disease management actions and in collaboration with several partner agencies and organizations, including the following:
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT SPONSORS
PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT SPONSORS
NON-GOVERNMENT SPONSORS
UNIVERSITY SPONSORS
CWHC PARTNERS AND COLLABORATORS
All of the above with the addition of:
First Nations and Inuit Health
ASSOCIATES & AFFILIATES
NATIONAL OFFICE
Colin Robertson – Wilfred Laurier University
Colin received his PhD from the University of Victoria in 2011. The unifying theme of his research is the development and application of spatial analysis and GIScience techniques in spatial ecology and epidemiology. Specifically, he is interested in understanding the role that environmental change has on the health of human and animal populations and how geographical tools can help to understand the complex interactions giving rise to new diseases and risks.
Currently his research is exploring the use of volunteered geographic information in environmental research, spatial and space-time modelling of emerging disease risk, and spatial model validation techniques.
Todd Shury – Parks Canada
Todd is a 1993 graduate of the Western College of Veterinary Medicine and has always had a fascination with wildlife and outdoor pursuits. Consequently, he has worked primarily with free-ranging wildlife and zoo animals ever since graduation: as an associate veterinarian at the Calgary Zoo, a wildlife veterinarian since 1994 and on numerous wildlife projects throughout Canada. He is currently the wildlife veterinarian for the Parks Canada Agency and oversees wildlife health, chemical immobilization training, animal care and disease issues in 42 national parks across the country. Todd recently earned a Ph.D. in epidemiology in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
Brett Elkin – Government of Northwest Territories
Brett is an established wildlife veterinarian and now Wildlife Director and Chief Veterinary Officer with the Government of Northwest Territories. His professional and research interests include disease ecology and epidemiology in free-ranging wildlife with a special interest in diseases of wood bison, such as brucellosis, tuberculosis and anthrax and their management. Public education pertaining to wild animal health issues and country food safety are ongoing focus areas. Brett is a long-time partner of the CWHC and currently is a member of the CWHC Executive Committee it’s senior advisory board as well as numerous other boards and committees, including the Canadian Council of Chief Veterinary Officers, a council member of the Wildlife Disease Association and several disease and species specific advisory boards and working groups. Since graduating from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine Brett has maintained close connections with both the University of Calgary and the University of Saskatchewan providing graduate student mentoring and is actively engaged in several wildlife health externships and field courses.
Gordon Stenhouse - Foothills Research Institute
Gord is a research scientist and the leader of the Foothills Research Institute Grizzly Bear Research Program. This research program began in 1998 and has grown to be one of the largest and most comprehensive bear research programs in North America. There are now over 1000 scientific papers from the research team working on this program over the past 15 years.
Gord received both his Bachelors and Masters Degree from the University of Manitoba. After graduating he moved to the NWT where he worked as a wildlife biologist for the Northwest Territories government. During this time he focused primarily on polar bear research.
Gord is on secondment from the Alberta ESRD and is an adjunct professor at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan. He is also the past chairman of the Alberta Grizzly Bear Recovery Team.
BRITISH COLUMBIA
Helen Schwantje – Government of British Columbia
Helen Schwantje is the Wildlife Veterinarian for British Columbia (BC) and responsible for the provincial Wildlife Health Program since 1992. She is also co-director of the CWHC BC region. The Program provides wildlife veterinary science advice and services, including the diagnosis of wildlife and zoonotic diseases, wildlife disease surveillance and species specific health assessments, focusing on species at risk and their conservation. She is the lead in the development of appropriate provincial-in-scope policies and procedures and sits on a number of recovery teams for species at risk. Other duties include animal care review, forensic services and expert testimony and training of staff/other wildlife professionals in immobilization, animal handling and care, disease diagnosis, and necropsy techniques.
She graduated from the Western College of Veterinary Medicine with Distinction in 1981 and received a Masters in Veterinary Pathology, with a specialty in wildlife diseases, in 1987. She worked at the Woodland Park Zoological Gardens in Seattle, Washington for an extended externship in 1981 and volunteered on numerous field projects in New Zealand, Australia, the United States and northern Canada during the period from 1981 to 1992. From 1987- 1993, she was the owner of a wildlife veterinary consulting company, performing various field procedures and written contracts for agencies and other consulting companies on a variety of wild species. She is a long time member of the BC Veterinary Medical Association, Canadian Veterinary Association, Wildlife Disease Association, American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians, the Canadian Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians and a past member of the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians and has held board and committee positions in several of these, including committees dealing with issues such as animal welfare, communications and international affairs.
ALBERTA
Owen Slater – University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Owen Slater is an instructor of wildlife and exotic animal medicine in the Department of Ecosystem and Public Health at the UCVM since 2012, in addition to being a freelance wildlife veterinary consultant and an associate of the CWHC in Alberta. He has always had a passion for wildlife and furthered his knowledge in this area through completion of a BSc in Ecology (2000) and a DVM (2006) at the University of Guelph. After an internship in zoological medicine (2008), Owen worked as a zoo veterinarian at Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago (2008-2010) and at the Calgary Zoo (2010-2012). Owen currently provides wildlife veterinary expertise to various government, private and non-profit organizations, as well as CWHC Alberta on captive and free ranging wildlife. He instructs wildlife chemical immobilization courses for provincial biologists and university researchers, is the current president of the Canadian Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians (CAZWV) and chair of the Wildlife and Ecosystem Health Advisory Committee for the Alberta Veterinary Medical Association. Owen has been involved in various endangered species conservation projects and wildlife research studies in North America, including work with eastern Massasauga rattlesnake, red wolves, mountain caribou, and bighorn sheep. In East Africa, he has worked on projects focusing on chimpanzees, mountain gorillas and spotted hyenas. Outside of veterinary medicine, Owen is an avid wildlife photographer with images published by many conservation organizations and is a wildlife guide for Classic Canadian Tours on trips to famed Churchill, MB and Khutzeymateen, BC.
Susan Cork – University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Dr. Cork joined the UCVM faculty in 2008 as founding Head of the Department of Ecosystem and Public Health. Prior to joining the faculty, Dr. Cork spent five years with the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture where she held a number of policy and management positions. Dr. Cork completed her Veterinary degree (Massey University) in 1987 and returned to complete a PhD in 1994. During her PhD she provided diagnostic support for wildlife in partnership with the New Zealand Department of Conservation. In 1995, Dr. Cork accepted the position of veterinary laboratory manager in Bhutan; this was part of an EU funded project to strengthen veterinary services in Asia. In 2003, after 6 years in the UK working in academia, she returned to New Zealand to join the Government Service and obtained a Diploma in Public Policy from the School of Government, Victoria University. In 2014, Dr. Cork completed a 6-month sabbatical at the National Centre for Animal Health in Bhutan. Her special interests are in global health, animal health policy, veterinary public health and wildlife diseases.
Judit Smits – University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
My research interests focus on ecotoxicology and the impact that environmental contaminants have on human and animal health. I study wildlife for their own sake, and because they can serve as sentinels of pollutant effects on human and animal health. A healthy ecosystem, by definition, includes the health of animals, humans and their environment (air, water, soil). My most recent initiative in toxicology research is towards mitigating chronic arsenic toxicity (arsenicosis) in humans using bio-fortified food. Arsenicosis affects 50 to 100 million people worldwide according to the World Health Organization. Another continuing research interest of mine involves avian research; passerines, waterfowl and gulls, storks, vultures and other raptors. Other classes of vertebrates with which I work are amphibians and carnivores. My research spans a wide geographic area, including numerous sites across Canada, Bangladesh, Mexico, Spain and South Africa.
Nigel Caulkett – University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary Medicine
Dr. Caulkett completed his DVM at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine in 1989. Soon after graduation, he worked on a project in the Northwest Territories, performing semen analysis on wood bison. Dr. Caulkett spent a year in mixed practice in St Paul Alberta and returned to WCVM in 1990 to start a residency in veterinary anesthesiology. Dr. Caulkett’s MVetSc research focused on xylazine epidural analgesia in cattle. After completion of his residency, Dr. Caulkett remained at WCVM in a clinical position for 1 year. Dr. Caulkett started on faculty at WCVM in 1994 and received board certification from the ACVA in the same year. Much of Dr. Caulkett’s research has focused on the development of safe capture and handling techniques in free ranging wildlife, and the development and evaluation of analgesic techniques in farm animals.
WESTERN/NORTHERN
Emily Jenkins (Affiliate) – Western College of Veterinary Medicine
Dr Emily Jenkins (PhD, DVM, BSc Honours Zoology) is head of the Zoonotic Parasite Research Unit and Associate Professor, Department of Veterinary Microbiology, Western College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. She is an associate member of the School of Public Health and an affiliate of the Western and Northern region of the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative. She teaches veterinary parasitology, public health, and One Health to veterinary and graduate students. Her research takes a One Health approach to diseases that transmit among wildlife, domestic animals, and people via food, water, vectors, and the environment in northern and western Canada.
ONTARIO/NUNAVUT
Ian Barker – Ontario Veterinary College
As a founding member and long-time Director (retired) of the CWHC Ontario/Nunavut Region Ian has had a long history with the organization and studying wildlife disease. Ian is a professor emeritus with the Ontario Veterinary College. Having edited, written and contributed to numerous publications, supervised dozens of graduate students and delivered many seminars, conference presentations and short courses Ian has greatly advanced the field of veterinary pathology and our understanding of wildlife diseases, including zoonoses.
ATLANTIC
Pierre-Yves Daoust – Atlantic Veterinary College
After 30 years in the Department of Pathology & Microbiology at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC), UPEI, Pierre-Yves Daoust recently retired as professor of anatomic pathology and wildlife pathology and as coordinator of the Atlantic node of the CWHC. During that time, he has worked diligently to promote in his region the contribution that veterinary science can make to wildlife biology and management. In particular, the AVC is in a unique location to study the health of marine animals, and this is an area that Pierre-Yves has personally promoted. His official retirement will actually give him more time to continue to devote to this aspect of veterinary science. In the meantime, he is leaving the Atlantic node in excellent hands, namely those of Megan Jones, new coordinator, and Laura Bourque, wildlife diagnostic pathologist, to continue this node's mandate.
Spencer Greenwood – Atlantic Veterinary College
Spencer is a tenured faculty member in the AVC’s Department of Biomedical Sciences. He is a diagnostic parasitologist with AVC’s Diagnostic Services and is a very productive researcher at the college. His expertise is specifically in the area of protozoology. Spencer’s major research interest is within the AVC Lobster Science Centre and focuses on improving our understanding of crustacean biology through molecular studies and to translating this new information into appropriate applications for improving the sustainability and economic viability of the Canadian crustacean industries (lobster, crab and shrimp).
David Overy – Nautilus Bioscience Canada – Atlantic Veterinary College
David is the Senior Research Scientist (i.e., Fungal Natural Product Discovery Group Leader) for Nautilus Bioscience Canada Inc. and is adjunct faculty in the Department of Pathology and Microbiology, AVC. His expertise is specifically in the area of mycology and utilizes classical culture for the identification of fungi, but he also has strong capabilities in applying molecular techniques for fungal identification. David has been actively involved in bat white-nose syndrome applied research with the CWHC Atlantic Region.
Gary Conboy – Atlantic Veterinary College
Gary is a tenured faculty member in the AVC’s Department of Pathology & Microbiology. He is an expert diagnostic parasitologist, particularly in relation to macroparasites He is a classic parasitologist, in the sense that his primary skills relate to identification of a wide variety of macroparasitic species based on morphologic characteristics, what can be described as diagnostic parasitology. A gradually decreasing number of veterinary parasitologists have such skills, since the current tendency is to adopt molecular tools and focus on research questions pertaining to only a few specific groups of parasites.
Ted Leighton – Western College of Veterinary Medicine
Frederick A. (Ted) Leighton is the former Executive Director of the CWHC and a professor emeritus in the Department of Veterinary Pathology at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine.
His childhood was spent in Nova Scotia and in upstate New York, and he has lived for significant periods in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Saskatchewan. His consuming interests are wildlife conservation and its place in sustaining ecological stability and human well-being within the limits of the biosphere. He has degrees from the University of Saskatchewan (DVM), Cornell University (AB, PhD) and Memorial University (Dip Ed.), and became a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Pathologists in 1984. Following retirement Ted moved to his long-term family property in Nova Scotia.
Dave McRuer – Parks Canada
Dave is a wildlife health specialist employed by Parks Canada and based at the Atlantic Veterinary College in Charlottetown, PEI. In this role, Dave works on a broad range of wildlife health issues in national parks including disease surveillance and management, animal care and welfare, immobilization training and drug acquisition, and assisting individual parks with knowledge and expertise responding to wildlife health concerns. Prior to joining Parks Canada, Dave worked as a wildlife biologist with the PEI Division of Forests, Fish and Wildlife and as the Director of Veterinary Services at the Wildlife Center of Virginia. Dave earned a Master’s degree in ecology in 2001 from Carleton University, his DVM from the Atlantic Veterinary College in 2005 and is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Preventative Medicine.
Dave Groman – Diagnostic Services at the Atlantic Veterinary College
Dr. David Groman has been working in the field of wild and aquaculture fish pathology for over 40 years, having begun his training at the Northeast Wildlife Disease Center at the University of Connecticut in 1976-1980 and continued onto the US National Fisheries Academy in 1978-1979, University of Idaho 1979-1983 and the University of Iceland 1983-1984. He brings a wide variety of fish health and fish pathology experiences to his current job in Diagnostic Services at the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) having worked on fish health projects and diagnostic cases in Atlantic Canada & Worldwide since arriving to the AVC in 1988.
For the last 26 years Dr. Groman has been Section Head of Aquatic Diagnostic Services at the AVC, and in this role has reviewed thousands of fish disease cases, including those from a large variety of wild fin-fish and shellfish. In this regard, Dr. Groman would offer the aquatic animal health clients and companies a breath of experience in the field of fish disease, which can be applied equally to both potential research projects.
