Wildlife in New Zealand as a source of zoonoses

Since the time of the bubonic plague, wildlife have been recognised as an important source of diseases transmissible to humans. Until recently however, the importance of wildlife reservoirs of zoonoses has often been neglected by veterinarians as they struggled to deal with major infectious diseases of livestock such as foot and mouth disease. But in the last decade, there has been renewed interest in this topic and a number of major investigations have highlighted the role that wildlife reservoirs have as sources of emerging infectious diseases.