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Blogs from the Field

A healthy future for wildlife, people, and planet.

A whale calf’s entangled flipper and how tightly wrapped the line is.

For my last summer before clinical rotations, I wanted to gain experience with marine animals. I was accepted as an intern with the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) Marine Mammal Rescue & Research (MMRR) program in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a unique geographical area where tides and coastlines can suddenly trap a dolphin or whale in inches of water....
Hery Ríos-Guzmán, DVM ’24, in Bayahibe, Dominican Republic, FUNDEMAR’s headquarters.

We strap on our snorkel gear and jump into the blue. It only takes a few butterfly kicks to reach a citadel bustling with life. Within seconds, we are greeted by branching, massive, and laminar structures formed by hundreds of genetically identical individuals....
Free-roaming dogs in Nepal

It was 5:30 am and I was already sweating when I stepped out of my wooden sleeping hut and into the steamy dawn at Nepal’s Chitwan National Park.  It was already 85°F but would reach 105°F before noon. I was up before the sun to complete my summer intern research project - a census of free-roaming domestic dogs in the park’s buffer zone....
Carolina Baquerizo and team collecting fecal samples for the study

Working with primates is something I had avoided for a while. Most of my interest has been in southern Africa, with ungulates like giraffes, antelope, and pachyderms being my main focus. Yet I felt that, following the COVID-19 pandemic, learning more about wild primate health would be vital....