Blogs from the Field
A healthy future for wildlife, people, and planet.
April 23, 2025
by
Carmen Smith
It was a misty morning on the outskirts of Chitwan National Park in Nepal, and I awoke after a night of little sleep broken by the sounds of dogs barking and roosters crowing....
April 09, 2025
The Fossil Rim Wildlife Center plays an important role in efforts to save wildlife species from extinction. I was fortunate enough to travel to Glen Rose, Texas for a preceptorship to experience these conservation efforts firsthand....
February 06, 2025
In the Kasongoire Forest of western Uganda, nearly 60 chimpanzees build nests and nap in Ficus trees; playful infants jump energetically from hanging vines, while young males sit in circles to groom each other. When you are deep in the forest observing the chimps, it is easy to forget that this forest is only a fraction of its former size....
July 26, 2024
In October 2023, I had the opportunity to travel to Tasmania, the island state of Australia, to learn more about one of its most iconic species, the Tasmanian devil. Tasmanian devils are the world’s largest carnivorous marsupials, and they play a key ecological role as scavengers and in suppressing populations of invasive species....
January 03, 2024
My heart hammers in my chest as I unlock the door to the enclosure, my eyes hunting through the mesh to find the animal inside. It’s not just the heat making my palms sweaty as I open the door and duck inside; it’s not just the exercise making me short of breath. Of all the animals in the clinic, this is the one that terrifies me the most: the one-armed, two-toed sloth named Ace....
September 20, 2023
I have met many conservationists who do not believe in keeping wildlife in captivity. However, the San Diego Zoo seems to win the hearts of both wildlife conservationists and those who work with captive wildlife. How does this zoo bridge the gap between the two?
February 11, 2023
Six years ago, on a regular workday, I was sitting at my desk tagging photos from a camera trap survey. Late in the afternoon, a picture of an uncanny species baffled me. It looked somewhat like a domestic dog, but taller and longer-bodied....
February 16, 2021
A few weeks ago I learned about trypanosome parasites in parasitology class. As the professor explained what diseases these parasites cause, one species of trypanosome in particular stood out to me, Trypanosoma evansi. T. evansi is transmitted by tabanid flies and is found throughout Africa, Asia and tropical America, and it causes a disease called surra in all domestic species.
January 09, 2020
by
Elizabeth Buckles
The news is depressing. A recently released article in Science by my colleagues at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology shows that 3 billion birds have vanished in the lasts 50 years….
September 20, 2019
by
Steve Osofsky
At our recent meeting in Maun, Botswana, an unprecedented reimagination of rangeland stewardship gained genuine traction, an approach that could resolve land-use conflicts that have plagued the nation and the region for more than half a century....