2026 (No. 1)
AHEAD Update
Dear AHEAD Colleagues,
Welcome to the latest issue of the AHEAD Update. As always, if you would like to post an item in the next Update, please just send it to us – thanks.
Featured Paper
Rosen, LE et al. (2026) Using Qualitative Risk Assessment to Re-Evaluate the Veterinary Fence Paradigm within the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area.
Frontiers in Veterinary Science
We are pleased to share this new paper with you, a product of an exciting collaboration in KAZA that AHEAD has helped facilitate over the past several years.
Building on the report we shared previously on a fencing scenarios disease risk assessment for KAZA, this new peer-reviewed publication strengthens and formalizes those findings, demonstrating that key veterinary fence sections could be removed in areas deemed critical for wildlife habitat connectivity without increasing the risks of transboundary disease outbreaks. In other words, the risks for outbreaks remained the same when comparing the status quo and scenarios with proposed fence section removals. In some cases, the authors also found that the probability of disease occurrence would be decreased by the addition of risk mitigation measures such as improved livestock herding.
New Videos & Podcasts
CNN Inside Africa – Featuring CLAWS (Communities Living Among Wildlife Sustainably)
CNN Inside Africa spotlights the work of CLAWS with communities in Botswana’s Okavango Delta, showing how community-led livestock herding is conserving lions while opening important new markets for certified wildlife-friendly beef.
Steve and Some Good Gnus in Southern Africa
Dr. Steve Osofsky shares how a potential paradigm shift in southern African livestock disease management has extraordinary implications for wildlife conservation.
Additional New Resources
Dickie, G (2026) Botswana Shows How Smarter Cattle Herding Can Save Lions, Reopen Ancient Wildlife Pathways.
Mongabay
Restoring traditional herding practices in northern Botswana keeps livestock safe from predators and diseases, reduces retaliatory killings of lions, and offers hope for restoring wildlife corridors.
Sennett C & Chambers CL (2025) International Border Fences and Walls Negatively Affect Wildlife: A Review.
Biological Conservation
Rapid expansion of international border barriers is fragmenting habitats and restricting wildlife movements. Cross-border collaboration and wildlife friendly alternatives to traditional fencing are needed.
Köhler E & Bollig M (2025) Elephant Corridors in the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (KAZA TFCA): Environmental Infrastructures for a Greener Anthropocene in Namibia’s Mudumu Landscape.
Review of Regional Research
Focusing on a key KAZA wildlife corridor and the complexities of corridor management, researchers find that conflict is more frequent along linear settlements close to roads than near corridors.
Truscott, R (2025) Corridors, Not Culls, Offer Solution to Southern Africa’s Growing Elephant Population.
Mongabay
Facilitating movement – rather than culling – offers a proactive, long-term conservation strategy for the region's elephant populations.
Idi, HM & Bebanto, ABB (2026) History and Evolution of Contagious Bovine Pleuropneumonia (CBPP): A Review of Scientific Knowledge and Control Strategies.
European Journal of Veterinary Medicine
Despite eradication elsewhere, CBPP persists in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. This review traces the disease’s evolution and control, identifying technical and policy-related needs for eradication.
Okunola, A et al. (2026) Whole-Genome Sequencing Reveals Genetic Diversity and Transmission Dynamics of Mycobacterium bovis in South African Wildlife.
Microbial Genomics
Using whole-genome sequencing, this study enhances understanding of how M. bovis spreads in South African wildlife, with findings that inform targeted management strategies to control transmission and protect biodiversity.
Auer, A et al. (2026) Innate Resistance to African Swine Fever Virus: Current Knowledge and Future Directions.
BMC Veterinary Research
This review examines the biological basis and epidemiological implications of natural resistance to African swine fever virus, highlighting key knowledge gaps and promising directions for future research.
Upcoming Meetings
Wildlife Disease Association (WDA) Conference
26-31 Jul 2026, Chicago, USA
The 74th annual WDA conference will be centered around the theme "Thriving Together: Urban One Health and Ecosystem Resiliency.”
9th World One Health Congress (WOHC)
4-7 Sep 2026, Lisbon, Portugal
WOHC 2026 will emphasize One Health science and the science-policy interface. Registration is now open.
Again, if you have items for the next AHEAD Update, please just let us know – thanks.
Yours in One Health,
Steve & Shirley
Steve Osofsky, DVM
Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine
Jay Hyman Professor of Wildlife Health & Health Policy
Director, AHEAD Program
Director, Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health
s.osofsky@cornell.edu
Shirley Atkinson, MSc
Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine
AHEAD Program Coordinator
Associate Director, Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health
s.atkinson@cornell.edu
What is AHEAD?
AHEAD works to create enabling environments that allow different and often competing sectors to literally come to the same table and find collaborative ways forward to address challenges at the interface of wildlife health, livestock health, and human health and livelihoods. We convene stakeholders and provide technical support and resources for projects locally identified as priorities. AHEAD, one of the first applied One Health programs, recognizes the need to look at health, disease, and the environment together, while always taking a given region's socioeconomic, political, and policy context into account.
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New 2024 KAZA Disease Risk Assessment Fencing Analysis |
Veterinary Fences in the KAZA TFCA:
Assessment of Livestock Disease Risks of Potential Removal of Specific Fence
Sections, with an Emphasis on the Botswana-Namibia Border |
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| Rosen, L. E., Amuthenu, N. S., Atkinson, S. J., Babayani, N. D., Elago, S. A. T., Hikufe, E., Mafonko, B. R., Mbeha, B., Mokopasetso, M., Motshegwa, K., Nkgowe, C., Penrith M-L., Ramokwena, E. M., Ramsden, N., Segale, K., Sharpe, J., Shilongo, A., Shoombe, K. K., Shuro, T., Thololwane, O. I., van Rooyen, J. & Osofsky, S. A. (2024). Veterinary Fences in the KAZA TFCA: Assessment of Livestock Disease Risks of Potential Removal of Specific Fence Sections, with an Emphasis on the Botswana-Namibia Border. AHEAD Programme, Cornell University on behalf of the KAZA Animal Health Sub Working Group. 300 pp. |
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AHEAD
Book |
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Osofsky,
S.A., Cleaveland, S., Karesh, W.B., Kock, M.D., Nyhus,
P.J., Starr, L., and A. Yang, (eds.). 2005. Conservation
and Development Interventions at the Wildlife/Livestock
Interface: Implications for Wildlife, Livestock and
Human Health. IUCN, Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge,
UK. xxxiii and 220 pp.
Downloadable PDFs of
whole book/each section available by visiting the AHEAD
Launch Proceedings page. Hard copies can be ordered
by e-mailing books@iucn.org |
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What
is AHEAD?
Animal & Human Health for the Environment
And Development was launched at the 2003 IUCN World Parks Congress
in Durban, South Africa. By assembling a ‘dream team’ of
veterinarians, ecologists, biologists, social and economic
scientists, agriculturists, wildlife managers, public health
specialists and others from across East and southern Africa,
we were fortunate to have tapped into some of the most innovative
conservation and development thinking on the African continent-
and AHEAD was born. Since then, a range of programs addressing
conservation, health, and concomitant development challenges
have been launched with the support of a growing list of implementing
partners and donors who see the intrinsic value of the One
World, One Health approach.
AHEAD is a convening, facilitative mechanism, working to create
enabling environments that allow different and often competing
sectors to literally come to the same table and find collaborative
ways forward to address challenges at the interface of wildlife
health, livestock health, and human health and livelihoods.
We convene stakeholders, help delineate conceptual frameworks
to underpin planning, management and research, and provide
technical support and resources for projects stakeholders identify
as priorities. AHEAD recognizes the need to look at health
and disease not in isolation but within a given region's socioeconomic
and environmental context.
In short, AHEAD recognizes the importance
of animal and human health to both conservation and development
interests. Around the world, domestic and wild animals are
coming into ever-more-intimate contact, and without adequate
scientific knowledge and planning, the consequences can be
detrimental on one or both sides of the proverbial fence. But
armed with the tools that the health sciences provide, conservation
and development objectives have a much greater chance of being
realized – particularly
at the critical wildlife/livestock interface, where conservation
and agricultural interests meet head-on. AHEAD efforts focus
on several themes of critical importance to the future of animal
agriculture, human health, and wildlife health (including zoonoses,
competition over grazing and water resources, disease mitigation,
local and global food security, and other potential sources
of conflict related to land-use decision-making in the face
of resource limitations). Historically, neither governments,
nongovernmental organizations, the aid community, nor academia
have holistically addressed the landscape-level nexus represented
by the triangle of wildlife health, domestic animal health,
and human health and livelihoods as underpinned by environmental
stewardship.
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