On June 1, 2006, the Wildlife Conservation Society entered into a cooperative agreement with the United States Agency for International Development for the program Wild Bird Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS). During the three years since its inception, WCS staff members and partners working on the GAINS project have made enormous strides toward establishing a global surveillance network to monitor the presence of avian influenza in wild birds with work in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.  Highlights include:  compiling the largest global database of wild bird observations currently available to the public, hosting 65 workshops, lectures, training sessions and seminars around the globe, training nearly 2,600 individuals in wild bird handling, sampling, data collection and general information related to controlling the spread of H5N1 avian influenza (AI), and the GAINS collecting over 30,000 samples for AI surveillance.  Below the final report is available including appendices of all previous quarterly reports and selected GAINS subawardee final narrative reports.

 On June 1, 2006, the Wildlife Conservation Society entered into a cooperative agreement with the United States Agency for International Development for the program Wild Bird Global Avian Influenza Network for Surveillance (GAINS). During the three years since its inception, WCS staff members and partners working on the GAINS project have made enormous strides toward establishing a global surveillance network to monitor the presence of avian influenza in wild birds with work in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.  Highlights include:  compiling the largest global database of wild bird observations currently available to the public, hosting 65 workshops, lectures, training sessions and seminars around the globe, training nearly 2,600 individuals in wild bird handling, sampling, data collection and general information related to controlling the spread of H5N1 avian influenza (AI), and the GAINS collecting over 30,000 samples for AI surveillance.  Below the final report is available including appendices of all previous quarterly reports and selected GAINS subawardee final narrative reports.