FACTS

1. Wildlife biologists face a variety of job-related hazards that are unique to this profession, most of them involving the remote areas where work is performed and the unusual techniques used to study or manage wildlife.
2. Humans take up more space on earth for our homes and cities. We pollute habitats. We illegally hunt and kill animals. We bring exotic species into habitats.
3. Wildlife causes numerous human injuries and fatalities by attacking or biting people, colliding with vehicles, striking aircraft, and serving as vectors or reservoirs for zoonotic diseases.
4. Injuries resulting from encounters with animals are a major, yet poorly recognized, public health problem. It is estimated that 1-2 million animal bites occur each year in the United States.
5. Injuries caused by animals are responsible for tens of thousands of deaths worldwide each year/ Unfortunately, many cases are poorly documented, and many patients die before obtaining medical care.
6. Zoonotic infections, diseases transmitted between vertebrate animals and man, affect millions of people yearly and are responsible for numerous deaths.

STATS

• The CDC (2016) estimated that 6,000–8,000 people are bitten by a venomous snake each year, and Forrester et al. (2018) found that 6 snakebite victims die annually in the United States.
• The American Association of Poison Control Centers was an association of 61 poison control centers, which covered 300 million U.S. residents (Langley 2008). They received annually an average of 6,803 calls from snakebite victims and 1,050 calls from victims of other reptiles from 2001 to 2005 (Langley 2008).
• About 27,000 people annually sought medical attention for a rodent bite, 750 for a skunk bite, and 500 for a fox bite (Moore et al. 1977, Conover et al. 1995). These attacks far exceeded the number of attacks by large predators but received less media attention because bites by small mammals were seldom newsworthy. From 2008 to 2015, no one in the United States died from a rat bite, but there were 3 fatalities from 2012, 2018.
• Across North America, there were 159 victims of coyote attacks in 2009. There were 2 fatalities: a child in California and a grown woman in Canada; both were predatory attacks (NBC News 2010)
• A zoonotic disease is one that infects both humans and animals; these diseases are much more common than most people realize (58% of all human diseases are also zoonotic).
• The last annual record was 2018. Based on this CDC data reported that 69,661 people sought medical attention for a zoonotic disease, and 376 people died (including both confirmed and probable diseases.