Abstract
On a December day in 2007, an American wildlife veterinarian named Scott Newman stood in a rice paddy near the shore of the Poyang Lake. He looked up as a flock of swan geese lurched into flight and circled in the sky overhead (see figure 4.1). Anser cygnoides, he thought to himself. Swan geese. Newman knew these birds. Both a doctor of veterinary medicine and a PhD in wildlife and disease ecology, he had worked for the Wildlife Health Alliance, the Wildlife Trust, and the Wildlife Conservation Society. Hired by the FAO in 2006 to coordinate international research on the