Schott

Photo courtesy of Dr. Renée Schott

A porcupine gets an exam by Dr. Renée Schott at the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota. The center has seen more than 18,000 animals this year, an indication of the regard that the public has for injured and orphaned wildlife in their midst.

Kayaking in a pond near her home in upstate New York, Amanda Bielecki spent much of her youth keeping company with nature, quietly watching birds large and small, whether ospreys, bald eagles, great blue herons or tree swallows.

Those peaceful days instilled a love for wild animals that guided Bielecki's college career, first as an undergraduate studying science, then in veterinary school. Now in her final year, she hopes to join a sector of the profession that few enter: wildlife health.

Bielecki attends Cornell University partly because it was her in-state option — making it relatively affordable — and because its College of Veterinary Medicine is one of a handful in the United States with substantive offerings in wildlife medicine.

The school's resources for free-ranging wildlife and conservation were boosted significantly this year by a gift of $35 million to the Cornell Wildlife Health Center, which was established in 2020. The donation is the largest in the veterinary school's history.

The gift to the center — now called the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health to honor the donor — makes $13.7 million available over the next five years for training positions such as postdoctoral fellowships, to support faculty and staff positions, for research and policy work around the world, and for student fieldwork. The remaining $21.3 million funds an endowment to support the center's activities into the future.

"Because we need nature, and now nature needs us" is the center's statement of purpose — a call for practitioners in One Health, an approach that recognizes that people, other animals and the environment are inextricably connected.

The saying also captures why opportunities in wildlife health overall are growing for veterinarians and why interest in the field may be growing among veterinary students.

"Wildlife veterinarians are absolutely needed," said Dr. John A. Bryan II, president of the American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians, which has about 350 members. Bryan pointed to SARS-CoV-2 and highly pathogenic avian influenza as top-of-mind examples of zoonoses with weighty public health implications. Referring to disease surveillance and investigations, he said, "Wildlife veterinarians are right in the middle of that."

For Bielecki, loving nature led to "wanting to give back" to the environment in the face of the climate crisis, which she calls "a tough issue that our generation has to deal with."

She remembers a jaw-dropping experience in high school of reading The Sixth Extinction, a book by journalist Elizabeth Kolbert about the mass loss of animal and plant life underway, driven by human alterations to the planet.

The account awakened Bielecki to "all the things that have changed so dramatically, at such a fast rate that it's hard to keep up." She resolved to contribute to knowledge and awareness. "It's beneficial to be ... at the leading edge of science," she said.

As a veterinary student, Bielecki has been measuring lead levels in New York state fishers, a type of weasel. She's detected the toxic heavy metal in more than half of some 350 tested. That the animals likely picked up lead in the environment has implications not only for wildlife but for people, too, she pointed out.

A niche within a niche

In a profession rooted in farm animal care and dominated today by companion animal practice, wildlife veterinary medicine has long been a niche sector, often overlooked. In fact, it's a niche within a niche — zoo medicine, exotic animal care and free-ranging wildlife health frequently are put in one catchall category, though they differ notably in approach and application.

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Photo courtesy of Amanda Bielecki

Cornell University veterinary student Amanda Bielecki spent four weeks in 2022 with Aquavet, a training program focused on the health and welfare of aquatic animals and their environment. The course included time in the lab, where she cultured fish for bacterial diseases.

Within the field of free-ranging wildlife health are further subcategories. There are clinicians who rehabilitate individual injured or sick animals; government veterinarians who monitor disease among animals in their jurisdictions; and veterinarians whose bailiwick is whole populations of animals across international boundaries, with responsibilities including advocacy and communication with the public and policymakers.

Wildlife veterinarians may work for public agencies, nonprofits, nongovernmental organizations or in academia. Conventional veterinary practice, by comparison, mostly is composed of for-profit businesses, small and large.

Private and corporate veterinary practice is much more prevalent because many people are willing or compelled to pay for medical care for family pets or animals they depend upon for a livelihood. No one individual owns wildlife, so funding for its well-being is dependent on taxes and fees collected by the government or charity.

Dr. Renée Schott, medical director of the Wildlife Rehabilitation Center of Minnesota, pointed out: "The entire field [of wildlife rehabilitation] is borne out of demand from the public to have a place to bring injured and orphaned animals. We wouldn't exist if there wasn't the demand and the donors."

Schott has worked full-time at the Minnesota center for 14 years and externed there while in college. From modest beginnings — it was once housed in a condemned building — the facility has grown into one of the busiest centers of its kind in the world, requiring four veterinarians on hand every day, Schott said. So far this year, the center has seen more than 18,000 animals.

The volume reflects a community's deepening concern for wildlife. They may not be owned, but "every animal that comes in is attached to a person," Schott said.

Society assigns differing values to species, adoring some and abhorring others, but each one brought to the center receives equal respect. "We view every species the same and every individual the same, whether that's a mouse or a trumpeter swan," Schott said. "We're in the business of compassion. Because the person who found the injured mouse cared enough to bring it to us, we encourage that compassion."

Deterrence and barriers

Schott was drawn to wildlife care early, spending summers as a teen working at a local rehabilitation center. She thought becoming a veterinarian would be a good fit. But initially, her interest in undomesticated animals was actively discouraged. Upon being rejected from her in-state veterinary school at the University of Wisconsin, Schott asked how to strengthen her application. "There's too much emphasis on wildlife," she was told. "You need more experience in a veterinary clinic."

Schott got a job at an emergency veterinary clinic in her hometown and applied again, playing down wildlife in her essay. She was accepted.

In veterinary school, Schott pursued whatever wildlife-related activities she could find. "My adviser didn't want me to do so many wildlife rehabilitation medicine externships," she recalled. "I believe it's because there's not a lot of jobs in rehabilitation medicine. So I think she was looking out for me."

Such stories are familiar to Bryan, president of the wildlife veterinarians association. He said students frequently are deterred, if inadvertently, from pursuing careers in wildlife medicine after hearing in the classroom that "only 1% of your colleagues go into that."

"The interpretation there, which is false," Bryan said, "is that it's that competitive; that 100% of the class will shoot for it, but only 1% will make it. The reality is that, typically, only 1% try it and follow it."

Other impediments exist. One, particularly for those wishing to work in conservation, is that a DVM might not suffice.

"A veterinary degree is one tool in the box, but you often need more," said Dr. Mark Ruder, a wildlife health professor at the University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine. Ruder is a veterinarian with a doctorate in pathology.

Whereas veterinary students are taught about the body systems of individuals, "when we're thinking about challenges that wildlife face, it goes way beyond that animal," Ruder said. "We're talking about transmission [of disease] between individuals; between species. There are a lot of external pressures. Some are natural [and] many of those are influenced by people — social factors, political factors. It's super-complicated. Understanding how disease works in an individual versus a population, the biology and ecology of species and how they interact, that's where some additional training helps."

Another potential deterrent is the low pay compared with that of for-profit practice. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports veterinarian median pay is $119,000. Specialists in for-profit practice can make much more.

Dr. Julia Burco, one of two wildlife veterinarians employed by the state of Oregon, has seen job postings for state veterinarians offering starting salaries of $67,000 to $72,000. Her own pay, 24 years into her veterinary career and with a master's degree and PhD, to boot, only recently reached $100,000.

"If I was coming out with the debt loads that students have now, there's no way that I could be going into this field," Burco said. Typical school debt of new veterinary graduates is close to $200,000.

"I always recommend to students, 'At least go into practice for a few years and get some real money,' " Burco said.

She noted that one financial benefit of government work is that it qualifies for federal Public Service Loan Forgiveness. Nonprofit employment qualifies, as well.

Bottom line, Ruder said: "Nobody's doing it for money. The people who are doing it in this field are 100% passionate and dedicated ... driven by purpose beyond money. You're not going to get rich doing wildlife work, but it's going to be very fulfilling."

Dr. Carolina Baquerizo can speak to that. When the 2024 Cornell graduate participated as a student in research projects in Zimbabwe and Uganda, she found herself deeply moved while doing fieldwork.

"The first time we freed an animal from a snare, and I saw it get up and run away because it was freed, it was so rewarding," she said.

Schools that give attention to wildlife health

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Photo courtesy of Dr. Carolina Baquerizo

As a 2022 summer intern with the Victoria Falls Wildlife Trust in Zimbabwe, Dr. Carolina Baquerizo, then a veterinary student, worked alongside a local anti-poaching unit to monitor vital signs on a Cape buffalo. The buffalo had been immobilized to remove a snare.

Wildlife health may be gaining new attention, but programs at a few veterinary schools date back decades. Perhaps the oldest is the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study, an initiative of state and federal wildlife management agencies based at the University of Georgia veterinary school.

The cooperative was formed by 11 states in 1957 to share disease expertise and resources in diagnostics and research. Today, the group has 18 members, most in the Southeast but stretching as far as the U.S. Virgin Islands and Nebraska.

Ruder is the organization's director. Its location at the veterinary school affords students opportunities to learn from veterinarians in the field and work on wildlife projects.

Still, as at most schools, wildlife is not a standard part of the curriculum. "The curriculum is hard and busy," Ruder explained. "It's hard to work in all the variety of options."

Exposing all students to wildlife medicine is not unheard of, though. It's been part of core studies at Tufts University Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine for decades. It is also part of a curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine (PennVet) instituted with the class of 2026, now in their third year.

Another school with a long history in the sector is the University of California, Davis, where the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center was established in 1998. The center is named for the founding donor, who continues to provide funding for a research fellowship in wildlife health. UC Davis also has a three-year residency specifically for veterinarians intending to make a career in free-ranging wildlife health.

At Cornell, wildlife-related research, teaching and programs existed in silos across the campus until fairly recently, according to Dr. Steven Osofsky, who was recruited to the faculty in 2016, having previously worked for the Wildlife Conservation Society and the World Wildlife Fund.

Osofsky organized a retreat in 2017 for those at Cornell working in wildlife health. More than 70 faculty and staff came. One attendee who had been at the university for more than 20 years told him, "I had no idea there was this much going on in wildlife health here." The event marked the start of a community coalescing into the wildlife health center, said Osofsky, who's the center director.

One program within the center is the Cornell Wildlife Health Lab, which is funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. (PennVet started a similar partnership in 2019 with its state game commission.)

Historically, money for state wildlife programs has come from hunting and fishing licensing fees and taxes on firearms and ammunition and directed to game species. But that's changing, said Dr. Jennifer Bloodgood, who works at the Cornell lab.

"There's an interest from the public and from the people doing the work — the veterinarians, the PhD researchers — to focus on all species more holistically," she said, noting that the donated infusion of funding to Cornell's wildlife health center is "great [because] it doesn't come with strings."

Broadening the reach

Beyond more training for veterinarians to pursue careers in wildlife health, Dr. Peregrine Wolff would like to see all veterinarians, no matter their area of expertise, be a voice for wildlife.

"This is a huge area where I think veterinary schools really could excel — teaching their students how to communicate science to the nonscientist," said Wolff, who is executive manager of the Wildlife Disease Association, a nonprofit with members worldwide.

As trusted sources of knowledge in their communities, Wolff said, veterinarians can help their clients understand the needs and vulnerabilities of wildlife. For example, "letting your cat roam outside could be dangerous for your cat and, in addition, lethal for songbirds and other small wildlife. [Veterinarians] can talk about keeping pets safe and also work to preserve wildlife and their habitats."

Within the profession, there's room for more communication, too, Wolff said. "I really would like to see more collaboration between wildlife veterinarians and their domestic animal colleagues. There are diseases shared back and forth that can have profoundly negative effects on many species, domestic or wild," she said.

More interactions among veterinarians in both sectors "could lead to a greater understanding of wildlife behavior," she added, "potentially leading to ... [greater] appreciation of the benefits of wildlife and wild places."