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Blogs from the Field

A healthy future for wildlife, people, and planet.

Danielle Keerbs shown changing a bandage.

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.... 
Katherine Zhou performing a medical procedure on a polar bear

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?
Camera trap image of an adult dhole

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....
Mariacamila Garcia Estrella shown in the field with another vet examining a young buffalo

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.
A Double-Crested Cormorant seen perched in a tree

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….
Elephant and baby in the wild

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....