Today is #OneHealthDay - a chance to affirm the interconnectedness between the health of animals, people and the environment.

We’re taking the opportunity to look back at why WVI was founded and how things have changed – both for wildlife health and for us as an organisation – since then.

Twenty years ago, two renowned British wildlife vets, Andrew Greenwood and John Lewis, who were working for the International Zoo Veterinary Group, found that they were frequently being asked for help by conservation organisations. People were desperate for support with veterinary issues, like carrying out anaesthesia for radio collaring, or advice on how to respond to an outbreak of disease. It was clear that there was a profound disconnect between where the conservation need for veterinary support was concentrated, and where the relevant expertise could actually be found. And yet not having access to the right veterinary expertise can make the difference between the success and failure of a conservation initiative.

The key knowledge and skills were often contained in the veterinary departments of zoological collections, like the Zoological Society of London, where vets like John and Andrew had much more hands-on contact with wildlife on a daily basis, at a great remove from the people working out in the field. In recognition of this, they set up WVI to transfer knowledge from zoos, 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.

It was quickly apparent that educating conservation organisations about the risk of extinction from disease was key; at the time, the risk to small populations of endangered animals from diseases like canine distemper virus – since recognised as a serious threat to large carnivores - was rarely considered in conservation action plans. There was an urgent need for conservation practice to be informed by the threat from disease, how to assess disease risk, and what mitigation might be possible, and to understand that collecting samples from healthy individuals is as important as taking samples from sick individuals. Sampling healthy animals allows us to look at health on a population level, find out what is ‘normal’ and identify potential threats so that mitigation strategies can be implemented sooner rather than later.

Over the last two decades, WVI has played a modest yet vital role in the recovery and protection of some of the planet’s most endangered species. Working in partnership with in-country conservation organisations, the veterinary knowledge and expertise we have been able to transfer has, for example, helped villagers in Bangladesh live more safely alongside tigers, saved injured sea turtles in the Mediterranean, facilitated the remarkable recovery of endemic bird species in Mauritius and been part of protecting the health of painted dogs, domestic dogs and humans in Zimbabwe.

We have done this by building long-term collaborative partnerships with local organisations working with threatened species. Our Veterinary Partners, who are all experts in aspects of conservation medicine, provide both in-person training and remote advice and support, tailored to take account of local resource constraints, including the availability of drugs and equipment, as well as cultural and legislative considerations. Training is delivered at a manageable pace that makes it realistic to embed into everyday practice. An important element of what we do is mentoring talented and dedicated individual vets and conservationists, who can then go on to cascade the knowledge to those they work with, both now and in the future, and to others within their country or region.

Since WVI was founded the situation regarding access to wildlife health training and expertise has improved, to some extent and in some places. A number of the larger conservation organisations do now have professional wildlife health departments, but there are still many smaller organisations and government forestry and wildlife departments where the vets employed have little or no wildlife health training. The lack of access to training is still particularly acute in regions of high biodiversity but limited economic resources.

While there is now a much wider understanding of how biodiversity loss, climate change, species conservation and human health are inextricably linked, the need to make training in wildlife medicine accessible has never been more urgent, with the latest Living Planet Report revealing that global wildlife populations have shrunk by an average of 75% in the last 50 years.

The organisation founded by John and Andrew twenty years ago remains both unique in its mode of working ‘between’ conservationists, governments and other stakeholders to make quality wildlife health training more accessible, and much needed it its mission to get veterinary science to the heart of conservation.

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