New thinking required on wildlife disease

 A University of Adelaide scientist says much more could be done to predict the likelihood and spread of serious disease such as tuberculosis (TB) or foot-and-mouth disease in Australian wildlife and commercial stock. Professor Corey Bradshaw  has evaluated freely available software tools that provide a realistic prediction of the spread of disease among animals.  Buffalo can harbour bovine tuberculosis, which poses a threat to commercial cattle livestock. They were introduced to northern Australia in the 1800s from Timor-Leste. In the 1980s and 1990s the government of the time began a broad-scale culling program, culling tens of thousands of buffalo.  Professor Bradshaw says Australia needs to implement tools such as those combining disease and population models to help plan the response to any potential return of TB  or other, nastier diseases, such as foot-and-mouth.