ABSTRACT
Most of the historical investigations and, hence, the scientific literature have predominantly dealt with diseases in domestic animals or humans caused by various species of the genus Brucella. There are, however, numerous examples of widespread brucellosis in freeranging, semidomesticated, and captive wildlife species. As brucellosis is being actively eradicated or, at least, successfully controlled in most domestic species in the more industrialized or advanced countries of the world, the presence of Brucella species in wildlife populations increases in importance as a potential future health threat to sympatric livestock industries and human populations. This pattern will, in every likelihood, be repeated in Third-World countries as improved vaccines and diagnostic techniques are eventually applied to the problem of brucellosis in their domestic livestock. At present, even in the face of the powerful tools of modem medical technology, there is no known example of a successful eradication of brucellosis from a free-ranging wildlife population without the accompanying eradication of that infected wildlife population. It is, therefore, highly probable that the last remaining reservoir of brucellosis on this earth will be in a wildlife population. This increasing epidemiologic significance of brucellosis in wildlife populations dictates that investigations should be conducted to understand better the disease as it exists in nature and that innovative disease prevention and control methods be tested for their efficacy in wildlife applications.
