UC Davis Wins USDA Award to Build an Early Warning System for New World Screwworm

AI sentinel cameras, a handheld DNA test and a five-state wildlife surveillance network aim to catch the flesh-eating parasite before it takes hold in the United States.

The UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine has received a two-year, $4.37 million award from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under its New World Screwworm Grand Challenge. The project, Smart Surveillance for Screwworm: Deploying Cutting-Edge Detection Technologies Across State Networks, began October 28, 2026. Led by veterinary epidemiologist Pranav Pandit, it will watch for screwworm in wildlife across California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Florida, with outreach into northern Mexico.

Why it matters

New World screwworm is a fly whose larvae feed on the living flesh of warm-blooded animals, including livestock, wildlife, pets and occasionally people. The U.S. eradicated it in 1966, but the pest has surged north since 2023 and reached the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, near the Texas border, by early 2026. The USDA estimates an outbreak in Texas alone could cost the state's economy $1.8 billion a year.

Last month, USDA confirmed the first New World screwworm infestation in U.S. wildlife: an elk harvested by a hunter on a game ranch in Pecos County, Texas. In the past week alone, new cases were confirmed in dogs, a cat and cattle across Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, including Arizona’s first case. In all, USDA has confirmed 79 animal cases in the U.S. since June, 25 of them still active, mostly in livestock. 

Current surveillance focuses on livestock and ports of entry, leaving remote wildlife areas as a blind spot. In 2016, screwworm killed more than 13% of the endangered Key deer in the Florida Keys before it was detected. This project is designed to close that gap.

UC Davis leads the project with three partners: Conservation X Labs (Sentinel AI cameras and the NABIT device), EpiEcos, and the Wildlife Neighbors Database Project. State wildlife agencies in all five corridor states are advising, along with state agriculture departments.

The team will build a layered early warning system with four parts:

• Hotspot maps: Risk models combining climate, land use and animal host data to predict where screwworm is most likely to establish, guiding surveillance and future sterile fly releases.
• AI "sentinel" cameras: About 100 smart cameras placed in high-risk wildlife corridors that recognize screwworm-like wounds and send real-time alerts.
• WildAlert and a handheld DNA test: Expansion of WildAlert, a UC Davis, WNDP and EpiEcos- led wildlife health alert system, into Texas, and New Mexico paired with NABIT, a portable device that screens suspect cases in the field before federal lab confirmation.
• Education for Detection: Training for key stakeholders including hunters, trappers, biologists and wildlife rehabilitators on spotting screwworm and reporting it quickly.

“Last month’s elk case in Texas showed that wildlife is still a blind spot in screwworm surveillance,” Pandit said. “This award brings together veterinarians, engineers, wildlife rehabilitators, and state wildlife and agriculture agencies across five states, so we can spot screwworm in wildlife early and get that information to responders fast.”