By NANCY LYBARGER
Indiana Correspondent

DUBOIS, Ind. — Joe Caudill knows what it’s like to live out of the back of a trailer. He is a wildlife specialist with Wildlife Services, a branch of USDA’s APHIS (Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) and he gets called out in all kinds of weather and all over the state to find out what’s happening with wild animals.
Caudill is happy to have an office in the new building dedicated Sept. 11 at the Southern Indiana Purdue Agricultural Center (SIPAC).

“It gives us a permanent presence in this part of the state,” he said. The state office is at Purdue University.

He’ll still need the trailer, though. His job is fieldwork. He collects samples for lab testing. He uses the equipment inside it, like a microscope and a laptop for necropsies - work on dead animals. His specialty is wild animals, like deer and feral pigs.

Lately, he’s had several interesting problems. He’s been called out about Bovine TB in captive deer populations.

He’s also been working with several southern Indiana ag producers who have feral swine herds. Some would like to eradicate feral herds so they don’t infect domestic herds with foreign diseases. One such disease that Caudill always tests for in feral swine is classical swine fever. He said it is a foreign disease in Indiana.
For the last three years, he’s been on the front line testing birds for avian influenza, H5N1. He said the disease is highly pathogenic in the wild bird population. This is surveillance right now, since the actual threat is in Asia.

“We haven’t seen it here yet,” he said.

His trailer is about three-years old. He hauls an ATV around in the back so he can get around out in the field. The trailer also can serve as an emergency operations command center in a disaster.
One of his responsibilities is disaster response. He’s been in Louisiana after the 2008 hurricane and post-Katrina. He said his job is to help rural people find safe places for their animals, along with food and health care until they can return home.

Now, he is working with the Wildlife Service, helping staff write a management plan to deal with white nose syndrome, a disease that is devastating cave bat colonies. He said the disease is not in the Midwest yet. “They are trying to prepare for it if it gets here,” he said.