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GREENSBORO — This is for all you raccoons in Greensboro: Smile. You’re on candid camera.

Last week, Animal Control officers set special traps armed with cameras throughout the city for the first phase of what health officials hope will become a full raccoon rabies vaccination program.

“It’s a very interesting project. I think if it’s viable, we should do it,” said Alyson Best, environmental health manager with the Guilford County Department of Public Health.

Guilford saw an increase in raccoon rabies in 2006, prompting officials to look for ways to stop the spread of the disease and possible contact with humans. That year, Guilford logged 37 confirmed cases of rabies, more than any other county in North Carolina. Of those cases, 20 came from raccoons.

But to progress to the vaccination stage, the county must first find out how many raccoons make their home in Guilford and what levels of rabies antibodies are in their system. The county is working with Maria Barón Palamar, a doctoral student in N.C. State’s fisheries and wildlife sciences program.

They’ll track the number of raccoons to see if it would be feasible to create a vaccination barrier zone here, similar to the federal zone along North Carolina’s western border.

That zone is baited annually with millions of liquid vaccines for raccoon rabies in an effort to stop the disease from spreading westward.

All successful programs have natural barriers, such as waterways or mountains, officials said.

“We don’t have a whole lot other than highways,” Best said. “But those might be sufficient.”

Raccoon rabies has been contained to the eastern United States, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services, which oversees the federal vaccination program.

Raccoon rabies first entered North Carolina in 1990 and quickly supplanted bat rabies as the leading source of the disease in wildlife, according to the state Department of Health and Human Services. By 2005, there raccoon rabies had appeared in nearly all 100 counties.

Raccoons are sociable creatures, which creates plenty of opportunity to spread the disease, said Brie Lang, a Wildlife Services spokeswoman.

The federal agency began a massive vaccination program in the early 1990s to stop the spread of raccoon rabies from the eastern United States. Each year the agency drops millions of baits filled with a liquid vaccine. Wild raccoons are captured and tested for the presence of the vaccine.

The zone stretches from Alabama to Maine, following the Appalachian Ridge.

Anyone exposed to a potentially rabid animal must be vaccinated.

“Ultimately, for us, we want to have fewer people have to go to get the post-exposure shots,” Best said.

The seven traps laid out last week are armed with fish-scented bait to lure in raccoons.

They’ll be used in five-day cycles at each site. The first five days will be to take pictures.

The second week will be used to trap raccoons to get blood samples for rabies antibodies testing, Palamar said.

The traps will then be rotated to a new location. Palamar wants to set them up in 35 areas to get a good count. She expects the count will take until February or March.

“We have to do it in several locations so we have a better idea of what’s going on in Greensboro,” she said.

She urged residents to ignore the traps so as not to interfere with the count. And if anyone is concerned about animals caught in them, call the number that is posted on each trap, she said.

The project is part of Palamar’s doctoral research. She’s already a vet, but went back to school to explore human-wildlife conflict.

As part of her research, Palamar also is surveying residents about their knowledge of rabies and vaccination clinics for pets.

“A big part of prevention is education,” she said.

Contact Jennifer Fernandez at 373-7064 or jennifer.fernandez@news-record.com