The personnel at the Division of Wildlife, Department of Pathology and Wildlife Diseases, SVA (www.sva.se), consist of 8 veterinarians, 2 wildlife biologists, a bacteriologist and support/administrative staff. The Department has also a Research and Development Division and conducts research particularly on infectious diseases of wild animals, such as highly pathogenic avian influenza, tularemia, hepatitis E, and other topics. SVA has long expertise on diagnosis of infectious diseases of wildlife applying a broad range of disciplines (bacteriology, parasitology, virology, pathology, molecular biology) and methods. The division of wildlife at SVA conducts diagnostic pathology on more than 5000 wild animals annually. SVA has built an archive of frozen wildlife samples of over 10 000 cases, including the target species of this proposal, collected since the late 1980s, which will be made available to the project to test the developed harmonized methods in selected hosts and for selected pathogens. SVA has worked specifically in sampling methodology for wildlife as part of the EU WildTech project, which are first steps to build on the development of harmonized sampling methods SVA works hand-in-hand with hunters, biologists, institutions and organisations directly involved in estimating population abundance, and it is therefore in a favourable position to contribute to this objective, in particular for estimations on wild boar and red foxes. SVA is actively involved in an extended  network of wildlife specialists and organizations. Interest groups and stakeholders in the wildlife arena in close collaboration and communication with SVA include nationally, the Swedish Board of Agriculture, the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and The Swedish Hunting Association; and internationally the OIE, IUCN, the Wildlife Disease Association and others. SVA's laboratory activities are accredited by SWEDAC in accordance with SS-EN ISO/IEC 17025.

Contact: dolores.gavier-widen [a] sva.se