Introduction
The health of British Columbia’s wild animals, like that of B.C.’s
human residents, depends on many things, particularly the quality and quantity of water, land
and air resources available to them.
Healthy wild animals must deal with the stresses of day to day living in many environments:
to obtain the right kind and amount of food; to reproduce and raise offspring; to avoid
predation; to adapt to extremes in weather and other changes in their environment, including
naturally-occurring diseases and parasitic infections.
Healthy wild animal populations are
important to us for many reasons - to satisfy ecological (conservation), commercial and
recreational (wildlife viewing, sustainable hunting and trapping) and social (cultural and
“just plain knowing that they out there”) values. Over the past several years,
emerging infectious diseases are increasingly of concern to wild animals, domestic
animals and humans.
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