• As many as 40,000 people each year in the United States are exposed to animals that might have rabies, and have to receive the shots that prevent the disease. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 37 people contracted rabies between 1990 and 2002, with 27 of the cases caused by bats.
• During 2002, 49 states and Puerto Rico reported 7,967 cases of rabies in animals and 3 cases in human beings to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an increase more than of 7% from the 7,436 cases in non-human animals and 1 case in a human being reported in 2001. Wildlife accounted for more than 90 percent of the reported cases of rabies.
  

Wildlife & Safety
Wildlife are much more than a public health threat - they can pose a great risk to public safety. Over a billion dollars is spent annually correcting property damage caused by wildlife.

Property damaged by floods caused by beaver dams, fields destroyed by woodchucks and gophers, golf courses filled with geese droppings, gardens destroyed by deer, and structures breached by skunks are just a few of the everyday problems wildlife create for homeowners and land users.

As wildlife populations continue to rise, motorists and air passengers are subject to an even greater threat:

• According to the U.S. General Accounting Office, accidents involving automobiles and deer result in more than $1 billion in damage annually.
• More than 6,000 collisions between aircraft and wildlife - mostly birds - occurred in 2000.
• From 1990 through 2000, wildlife-aircraft strikes resulted in the deaths of approximately 140 people and the destruction of 115 aircraft worldwide. Such accidents cost civil aviation more than $400 million annually.
• According to researchers at the CDC, a reported 247,000 motor vehicle accidents involved collisions with wildlife during 2000.
• Two hundred motor vehicle occupants died and more than 26,000 were injured and treated in emergency rooms as a direct result of animals crossing the road during 2001-2002.