By Danielle Keerbs, Cornell DVM ‘26

Government isn’t the first place that most veterinary students would think of charting a career path, even those of us interested in wildlife. However, as I learned this past summer, government work can offer just as rich and diverse an experience as any zoo. Funded by Jake Holshuh ‘67, DVM ’69, who generously sponsored this experience through the Student Support Fund, and the Student American Veterinary Medical Association government and policy grant, I spent eight weeks this past summer exploring a different facet of wildlife medicine with Arizona state wildlife veterinarian Dr. Anne Justice-Allen at the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) Wildlife Health Program. Initially, I was equal parts excited and apprehensive about this experience. My prior work in the wildlife field revolved largely around rehabilitation and clinical practice, and I found myself intimidated by how out of my depth I knew I would be. At the same time, it was one of those moments where I decided to throw caution to the wind and try something different – a decision that resulted in one of the most interesting and enriching experiences I’ve had to date.

Two Months in the Life of a State Wildlife Veterinarian

When you’re working with wildlife, no two days are the same, and this proves especially true in government. We could be working at our desks one moment, adding our cases to the Wildlife Health Program database, and the next be called out to investigate a series of wildlife mortalities around the city or to go retrieve a bat from a member of the public for rabies testing.

One morning, we took an impromptu trip to check on a male Mexican gray wolf at Southwest Wildlife Center who had been doing poorly over the past few days. It was humbling to work on such an iconic species, and it was also an excellent example of how small animal medicine can directly translate to wildlife: the radiographic procedures, orogastric tube placement, and physiological considerations for anesthesia were essentially the same as for any large breed dog. It was also on this wolf that I had the opportunity to attempt my first ever cystocentesis, a procedure in which a needle is inserted into the urinary bladder of an animal through the abdominal wall to collect an uncontaminated urine sample.

While summer is the slow season for fieldwork, I had the opportunity to go out on several occasions and learn about other programs and departments that the Wildlife Health Program supports. Sathvik Nallagatla, the Wildlife Health Program intern, assistant state wildlife veterinarian Dr. Katie Schwartz, and I spent a few days up in Seligman, Arizona, the town that inspired the fictional location Radiator Springs from the movie Cars. The area around Seligman is excellent habitat for prairie dogs and by extension, black-footed ferrets. In Arizona and surrounding states, wild black-footed ferrets face several threats to maintaining stable populations, including sylvatic plague. Sylvatic plague, caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread via fleas, both affects the ferrets directly and decimates prairie dog populations, which are one of their most important prey sources. Our work in Seligman primarily involved teaching the prairie dog program staff to take blood samples for plague testing, which will help track where plague exists on the landscape and inform management decisions in their ongoing fipronil bait insecticide trials. Sathvik and I also helped with the prairie dog interns’ day-to-day tasks, including setting and checking traps and processing the animals we caught.

Most of the work of a state wildlife veterinarian is more practical and less glamorous. Throughout my eight weeks, I sat in on many meetings and trainings with Dr. Justice-Allen. Topics of these meetings ranged from developing a capture immobilization plan for white-tailed deer and bighorn sheep captures in the fall for one of the game management units to the inauguration of the national wildlife disease database, which was mandated by Congress to keep track of wildlife diseases of concern in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hosted a training event aimed at exploring a new chronic wasting disease (CWD) model for Arizona, which is one of the few CWD-free states, and Dr. Justice-Allen led several trainings, including one on bloodborne pathogens and another on methods of chemical immobilization for new wildlife officers. When I had extra time, I also helped Sathvik prepare for the CWD sampling season, which included updating the program’s lists of taxidermists and meat processors to reach out to, sending out correspondence to prior and new participants, and assembling CWD sampling kits.

I also spent a significant amount of time in the necropsy laboratory. Having no exposure to necropsies beyond our dissection laboratories, I found myself both excited and nervous. For the first few necropsies, Dr. Schwartz or Dr. Justice-Allen discussed how to identify and document the pathologic findings, including differentiating between artifact and true pathology, and talked me through generating a list of differential diagnoses and how we would test for each one. Halfway through my externship, we were joined by a fourth-year DVM student who had significant experience with necropsies and who also helped advance my learning, both from listening to the questions that she asked of Dr. Justice-Allen and Dr. Schwartz and working through necropsies with her. Despite my initial hesitation, necropsies became one of my favorite aspects of this externship; I became more confident in my hands-on skills and it was a great way to apply the information I’d learned in class to real-world situations. My favorite case was a juvenile mountain lion that was presumptively hit by a car and on which I performed most of the necropsy.

Lessons from the Office and the Field

Taking the plunge into an aspect of wildlife medicine that I’ve always sworn off ended up being one of the best decisions I could’ve made for my summer externship. Dr. Justice-Allen provided excellent mentorship, and it was inspiring to learn about how she had built the AZGFD’s Wildlife Health Program from the ground. A focus of the program involves CWD surveillance across the state and establishing a comprehensive set of recommendations in the event of detection of the disease. Dr. Justice-Allen also provides support for other programs within the Terrestrial Wildlife branch of the department, including invasive apple snail removal, and management, capture and relocation efforts for species such as bighorn sheep and pronghorn. She also assists with managing the state’s population of captive Mexican gray wolves. The sheer scope of her responsibilities and her ability to handle them all – from working with the public and educating colleagues within AZGFD to applying clinical skills and teaching new wildlife officers about safe wildlife immobilization techniques – impressed me and helped me chart a clearer path forward for myself. 

I’ve come away from this externship with a greater appreciation for and understanding of the principles and topics we discuss in lecture, and being able to apply the theory of what I’ve learned to real-world scenarios helped connect many of those concepts for me. Overall, my experience with Dr. Justice-Allen and AZGFD has motivated me to seek out other nontraditional avenues of wildlife medicine and explore a side of the veterinary world that I never thought I would find so interesting or enjoy so much.

Danielle Keerbs is a third-year DVM student in the class of 2026 at the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine. She received her BS in Environmental Studies with a minor in Spanish from Washington State University, where she cemented her interest in wildlife medicine. She has worked with wildlife in many contexts, including rehabilitation, clinical medicine, and research. Her interests and career goals include field-based research focused on emerging and infectious diseases, mitigating human-wildlife conflict, and working in underserved communities internationally.