Characteristics and Perspectives of Disease at the Wildlife-Livestock Interface in Europe

Massive changes in habitat and human population growth have had significant effects on European wildlife communities. Rural abandonment and growing woodland and scrubland habitats, along with agricultural intensification, favor the population growth of a few successful species, including several carnivores, most ungulates and relatively few highly adaptable bird species. These are the main wildlife species to consider at the European wildlife-livestock interface. Driven by the changes in habitat and animal populations, as well as in human behavior, there is an emergence or re-emergence of infections shared between wildlife and livestock, and considering that some of them are zoonotic, an increased impact of wildlife health on human health. This chapter describes the characteristics of the potential interactions between wildlife and domestic animals in the European context, the problems related to those interactions that can facilitate disease emergence, and introduces the possible impact of climate, environmental or socio-economic change on our capacity to successfully mitigate the sanitary consequences of wildlife-livestock interactions. It includes three boxes on African swine fever, animal tuberculosis and host population monitoring. These boxes complement the main text to provide the reader with an updated overview on the wildlife-livestock interface in Europe.