Blogs from the Field
A healthy future for wildlife, people, and planet.
March 02, 2026
by
Victoria Priester
The phone rings. There are 3,500 shorebirds suspected to be affected by the crude oil spill. This was a fictional but realistic scenario I faced on my first day at the 2025 Wildlife Disease Association Conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada....
February 20, 2026
This past summer, I traveled to Australia to serve as a veterinary student extern at the Taronga Wildlife Hospital located in Taronga Zoo Sydney....
February 11, 2026
Aquatic veterinary medicine began as a dream for me, a field hidden behind the scenes, largely unknown. Still, I knew that someone was providing medical care for the animals at the zoos and aquariums I often admired and learned from throughout my life....
February 03, 2026
As a young girl, I was captivated by the majestic animals and wild landscapes I saw on television—so different from the concrete jungle that surrounded me. They seemed magical, distant, and almost unreachable from my urban home in Queens, New York....
January 26, 2026
I had the amazing opportunity to complete a veterinary externship at the Hawaiʻi Wildlife Center on the island of Hawaiʻi...
January 13, 2026
On the first day of my externship with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, I shook hands with Dr. Julia Burco, a state wildlife veterinarian, and I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude and fulfillment....
January 05, 2026
March ended in quite a spectacular way for me this year. I began the month sitting in classrooms at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine and ended it out in the Zimbabwean bush, drawing blood from a sedated lion under a nighttime African sky....
December 11, 2025
One of my primary goals during my veterinary education was to present at a professional conference to gain experience and build my network. I was able to achieve this goal by presenting at the 2025 International Association for Aquatic Animal Medicine Conference....
December 02, 2025
This past spring, I had the opportunity to travel to Gulfport, Mississippi, where I served as a veterinary student extern at the Mississippi Aquarium. It was my first time working at an aquarium, and I loved it....
November 24, 2025
Veterinary medicine offers a wide range of career paths and options, and one of the most interesting and often overlooked is that of a state wildlife veterinarian....