The hunting, butchery, and consumption of wildlife is a known interface for the transmission of zoonotic pathogens. The frequent contact between hunters and wildlife and the handling of bodily fluids greatly increases opportunities for pathogens to cross species barriers.

While researchers have characterized the risk of transmission at this interface in Central and West Africa, Amazonia remains understudied. In 2016, I, along with the Waiwai community, started a hunter-based wildlife health surveillance program to better understand the health of wildlife harvested for food by the Waiwai.

This is one of the only long-term, hunter-based wildlife health surveillance programs in Amazonia where Waiwai parabiologists perform their own field necropsies. We maintain a large biological sample collection of blood, tissue, feces, and hair preserved for histopathological and molecular diagnostics.