Australia’s geographic isolation provides a natural quar­antine barrier to disease and Australia is fortunate to be free of most of the serious diseases that affect animals in other parts of the world.

This favours our unique wildlife, environment, biodiversity, human health, domestic animal health, farm productivity, trade and economy. Biosecurity is a responsibility shared by governments, animal industries, veterinarians and the general public.

Australia’s nationalised, broad-ranging animal health biosecurity system has been described (AHA 2022). The system is a complex amalgamation of pre-border (off­shore), border and post-border (onshore) activities car­ried out by all Australian governments in collaboration with a large number of industry and other stakeholder groups, represented by several peak bodies.

This volume, and other previous works (Vogelnest and Woods 2008; Vogelnest and Portas 2019), focus on the medicine of Australian mammals. This chapter presents a bigger picture of wildlife health in Australia by introducing

If you see any signs of disease that are unusual or clusters of wildlife deaths then you should contact your local WHA Coordinator or call the Emergency Animal Disease (EAD) Hotline: 1800 675 888.

Your local WHA Coordinator contact details:.

Australia’s biosecurity system and its wildlife health com­ponent with a focus on surveillance, preparedness and response. A description of Australia’s wildlife health sur­veillance and coordinating system is presented in the con­text of Australia’s animal health biosecurity framework. The chapter also briefly outlines several key areas that sup­port the system, including diagnostic approaches and edu­cation and training. Important sections discuss roles, responsibilities and how the veterinarian can contribute to this system, as well as some useful resources and where to find additional information.

Australian veterinarians working with wildlife form an important part of Australia’s wildlife health frame­work, providing a crucial source of wildlife health intelli­gence, information and knowledge, as well as surveillance and response capacity for disease events involving wild­life. It is hoped that after reading this chapter Australian veterinarians will have an overview of the frameworks and systems that are in place to manage wildlife health in Australia, understand where they fit into it and how they can contribute to the system.

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