Emerging infectious diseases of wildlife: threats to biodiversity and human health

This influential review synthesized how emerging infectious diseases threaten wildlife, including charismatic carnivores, and intersect with human and domestic-animal health. The authors framed disease emergence as driven by anthropogenic changes such as habitat encroachment, translocation and contact with domestic reservoirs, citing examples including canine distemper in Serengeti lions and rabies in African carnivores. They argued for an integrated One Health perspective linking wildlife, livestock and people. While not specific to a single felid, the paper provided the conceptual backbone for the field of conservation medicine and is routinely cited in wild-cat disease studies. It established disease as a major, often underappreciated, extinction driver and motivated systematic surveillance at the domestic-wildlife interface where many felid epidemics originate.