The Beaver State Podcast: Wildlife Disease and Coronavirus

Published: March 19, 2020, 7:44 p.m.

We're living through a global pandemic right now, and the chief culprit is a virus called coronavirus. What's that have to do with wildlife? Well, quite a bit it turns out. This particular coronavirus likely jumped to humans through contact with wildlife. To better understand this concept, we spent some time at ODFW's Wildlife Health and Population Lab Program with state wildlife veterinarian Dr. Colin Gillin and wildlife veterinarian Dr. Julia Burco talking about zoonotic diseases, those that jump from animals to humans as well as wildlife diseases that they monitor here in Oregon.