LEXINGTON, Ky. — Natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and winter storms can be bad for everyone involved. Often overlooked are the livestock in these situations.

 

The University of Kentucky (UK) is hoping to help alleviate this with exercises it will be hosting specializing in the protection of livestock in natural disaster management.

Rescue coordination for animals will be taking center stage from July 11-12 and again July 13-14 as the UK College of Agriculture, Food and Environment hosts a pair of virtual exercise for animal responders across the United States. The Multi-Jurisdictional Animal Resource Coordination Exercise (MARCE) 2017 focuses on disaster response for pets, livestock and horses, captive wildlife and laboratory animals.

Teams from 21 states will be participating in the exercises from their emergency operations centers, with UK directing logistics from its Lexington base.

“We are looking forward to this opportunity to enhance responders’ knowledge and understanding of how to request resources for animal response from federal, state and non-governmental organizations during a disaster,” said Andrea Higdon, UK Emergency Management Systems director. “It’s also an excellent way to enhance national, regional and state partnerships and to challenge partners to coordinate animal response during a disaster.”

In each pair of exercises, each state will spend one day being the disaster-affected state and the other day responding to disaster areas’ requests. MARCE is a Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program and will use virtual sandbox environments for participants to focus on nationwide coordination to test state Emergency Operations Center’s ability to request out-of-state, federal and non-governmental organization resources in response to a disaster affecting the animals.

“The primary goal of MARCE 2017 is to improve communication before, during and after a disaster between state departments of agriculture and state emergency management,” Higdon explained.

“We hope participants will be able to handle requesting animal care resources more efficiently during real-world disasters as a result of the increased collaboration between state, federal and non-governmental agencies.”

The funding for the training resulted from a cooperative agreement between UK and the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Those interested in learning more about MARCE 2017 can visit http://marce.ca.uky.edu