Emergency animal diseases (EADs) are diseases that can cause devastating impacts to the livestock industry in Australia. In the event of an EAD outbreak, detecting and diagnosing the movement of these pathogens into a new area, whether through air or water, can significantly assist epidemiologists and decision-makers in determining their next steps. Multiple air samplers have successfully been used to detect selected EAD viruses such as foot and mouth disease and African swine fever. Due to the difficulty of working with EAD viruses in Australia, representatives of low-containment viruses were tested as a model for trialling three air samplers using different collection technology (filter, cyclonic, and static). Experimentation was first trialled in an aerosol chamber within a PC2 facility to assess viral recovery and establish downstream molecular pipelines using a plant virus. This will be followed by viruses resembling closely to EAD viruses and field tests to assess viral collection in different environments in Victoria. The results would give further insight for using environmental nucleic acid (eNA) approaches, such as air samplers, as a surveillance system to detect EAD pathogens.