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What has veterinary medicine got to do with Conservation?
15/04/2024
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What has veterinary medicine got to do with conservation?
Part 1: Who we are, what we do and why it matters.
Please save the date for this year’s Big Give Green Match Fund campaign – 18th to 25th April - and watch out for more news on how you can make sure veterinary expertise gets to where it’s needed; on the conservation frontline.
The link between conservation and wildlife medicine
Over the last century, tigers have disappeared from around 95%of their historic habitat[1]. Today, there are an estimated 5,000 left in the wild. If those tigers were people, there wouldn’t be enough of them to fill the seats of London’s Royal Albert Hall. While concerted conservation efforts around the world are beginning to turn the tide and we are seeing tiger numbers increase in some places, notably Nepal and India, in others the numbers continue to tumble. Initiatives to save tigers typically focus on preventing poaching, protecting habitat and prey, stopping illegal logging and helping local communities find ways to live alongside big cats. However, with many of the world’s tigers now living in small, fragmented populations, research has shown that an outbreak of a disease like canine distemper virus, which can affect any carnivore, can seriously impact such small tiger populations, significantly increasing the chances of local extinction[2]. At the same time, an increase in African swine fever is devastating some wild boar populations, which are an important source of prey for tigers[3]. In other words, unexpected disease can seriously derail conservation efforts.
And it isn’t just infectious disease that can affect wildlife health. When numbers of a threatened species are very low, every individual has a key role to play in its long term survival. Being able to safely capture and correctly treat sick and injured animals so that they have a good chance of living successfully back in the wild is vital, as is knowing how to translocate and reintroduce threatened species to both historic and new habitat without creating fresh health problems.
This is where WVI fits into the bigger species conservation picture.
The founding of WVI
WVI was founded nearly twenty years ago, at a time when there were few vets embedded in conservation organisations or government wildlife departments, and in response to the recognition that endangered species conservation projects often did not have access to the wildlife medicine expertise that can make the difference between ultimate success and failure.
Two renowned wildlife vets working for the International Zoo Veterinary Group[4], Dr Andrew Greenwood and the late Dr John Lewis, found that they were frequently being contacted by conservation groups looking for help with veterinary issues such as carrying out anaesthesia for radio collaring, or advice on how to respond to a disease outbreak. It was very evident that the conservation need for veterinary support and the relevant knowledge were quite separate, with the expertise often to be found in zoological collections, like the Zoological Society of London, where vets had much more hands on contact with wildlife on a daily basis than people working out in the field. Consequently, John and Andrew set up WVI to help transfer this knowledge from the zoological societies, universities and some of the larger conservation organisations to where it was desperately needed; on the conservation frontline in some of the world’s most biodiverse regions.
Although some of the bigger wildlife conservation organisations (e.g. Wildlife Conservation Society) have since created in-house wildlife health departments, a dearth of access to expertise persists globally. This is particularly the case in areas of high biodiversity but low income, where there still tends to be very little in-country training available in wildlife health and often very few practicing wildlife vets.
Working in Partnership
Today, WVI works in partnership with local conservation organisations around the globe to build in-country capacity in wildlife medicine. We upskill local vets and biologists, and make sure they have access to relevant and reliable knowledge and expertise that will enable them to be as effective as possible. We establish long-term partnerships between organisations working on the ground to save endangered species and our Veterinary Partners – veterinary professionals with specific knowledge and skills relevant to a particular species or project – in order to transfer expertise.
Our partnerships are characterised by the delivery of very manageable amounts of training, appropriate to local circumstances, which can be implemented immediately. As the partnerships are usually long-term, knowledge and advice can be ‘drip-fed’ at a rate dictated by the conservation organisation, taking account of local resources in terms of capacity, capability, availability of drugs and equipment, and any legislative restrictions. In-person field trips by our Veterinary Partners every 12-18months are key; there’s no substitute to being on the ground in order to properly understand the specific challenges and individual circumstances of a project, and also to build a mutual relationship of trust and a solid foundation for knowledge exchange. Our Veterinary Partners are always on hand to provide advice remotely in the intervening periods. In-person visits typically include hands-on clinical support and on-the-job training, providing content for workshops on a specific aspect of health care, taking part in strategy discussions, meeting with government officials and giving talks at local veterinary colleges.
Many of the veterinary professionals now providing the expertise to conservation projects were mentored by our founders, John and Andrew, and are now in turn helping to train the next generation of wildlife vets around the globe.
Species Conservation in 2024
Wildlife populations everywhere have seen an average population decrease of 69% since 1970[5], as we live through our planet’s sixth mass extinction event, and the first driven by the activity of just one species – us. Now more than ever we need to make sure that local vets and biologists working on the conservation frontline have the best possible veterinary knowledge, skills and training to give them the greatest chances of success in saving the species with which they work.
We are beginning to understand better how preserving biodiversity protects ecosystems, which in turn helps in the battle against climate change, and that the health of all species that share the planet, humans included, is fundamentally interlinked. The Covid pandemic in particular shone a light on the expanding interface between wildlife, humans and their livestock, with wet markets just one illustration of how some species are now coming into contact with others for the first time, allowing novel pathogens to spill over into new hosts. The current avian flu epidemic is also demonstrating how easily one disease can spread and affect a wide range of species, from chickens to polar bears.
Big Give Green Match Fund
Getting the right veterinary knowledge, skills and training to the conservation frontline is a vital part of the puzzle to protect species, ecosystems and the health of all life on the planet, ourselves included. As a small, flexible organisation, WVI can respond quickly to developing needs, working with and between local conservation organisations to help those that need it most access the vital veterinary expertise required to save endangered species. But we can’t do it without your help.
Please save the date for this year’s Green Match Fund campaign – 18th to 25th April - and watch out for more news on how you can make sure veterinary expertise gets towhere it’s needed – on the conservation frontline.
Our next news story which will look in more detail at the importance of testing and controlling disease and how WVI has been working in partnership to enable better disease surveillance in species ranging from parakeets in Mauritius and painted dogs in Zimbabwe, to tigers in the Russian Far East and pine martens in the UK.
[1] https://tigers.panda.org/news_and_stories/stories/where_the_world_has_lost_tigers/
[3] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2023.1135935/full
[5] https://livingplanet.panda.org/en-GB/
