By day, Dr. Alexandria Bullen treats cattle and cats at a veterinary clinic on Tasmania's rugged northwest coast. By night, she's out tracking platypuses and bandicoots in the wilderness. In this episode, host Dr. Cat Vendl meets Alex at the Australasian WDA conference to explore how she bridges clinical practice with wildlife research.

Discover why golf courses and urban dog parks are unexpected bandicoot hotspots, what a decade of platypus health monitoring reveals, and how Alex's research uncovered these marsupials' surprising cold tolerance. From her transformative Antarctic journey with Homeward Bound – where migrating seabirds reminded her how interconnected our world truly is – to volunteering with Vets Beyond Borders in Indonesia, Alex shares how stepping outside traditional veterinary roles opened doors she never imagined.

With a PhD on quoll health ahead, Alex delivers an empowering message: you don't need fancy resources or prestigious positions to contribute to wildlife health. Life is a choose-your-own-adventure, and the key is refusing to let imposter syndrome hold you back.

Links

Learn about  Conservation Medicine in Regional Tasmania here

Interested to learn more about the homeward bound journey? Check it out here.

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What if we could prevent wildlife health crises instead of always racing to respond to them? Dr. Leanne Wicker has spent decades asking this question – from anesthetizing seals in Tasmanian car parks during lunch breaks to tracking ocean temperatures through Antarctic seal movements, from nearly a decade managing confiscated wildlife during Vietnam's bird flu outbreaks to pioneering the field of veterinary ecology back home in Australia.

Through her work with critically endangered swift parrots, Leanne reveals how a single photo of a lonely nest tree standing in a logged forest transformed her approach to conservation. She's championing a radical shift: understanding that nest failure isn't just about numbers – it's about healthy parents, viable eggs, and well-fed chicks thriving in intact ecosystems. After experiencing the wildlife health frontlines across three continents, Leanne shares her vision for proactive conservation where veterinary expertise helps create conditions for wildlife to flourish, rather than waiting for disaster to strike.

Links
Check out Leanne's current employer and their work:  Enviro-Dynamics

Learn more about the swift parrot project here. 

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From Peru's copper mines to penguin colonies, PhD candidate Mya Daniels-Abdulahad tracks a toxic trail that threatens an entire species. Winner of the 2025 BioOne Ambassador Award, Mya reveals how mining waste travels through ocean food chains – with iron accumulating at four times normal levels in Humboldt penguin eggs and cadmium weakening their shells.

Working between Peruvian field sites and Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, Mya uncovers how penguin embryos become trapped in "toxic time capsules" while these vulnerable birds serve as sentinels for contamination affecting entire coastal ecosystems. Discover how populations crashed from hundreds of thousands to just 16,000 birds, and why zoo surplus eggs became crucial for understanding wild population risks in this compelling One Health story.

Links

Check out Mya's winning video here

Mya's paper on the topic

Check out the lab's website Mya works with here

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Join host Dr. Cat Vendl as she follows Dr. Ralph Vanstreels tracking high pathogenicity avian influenza from South America to Antarctica. Ralph shares insights from surveying remote coastlines and documenting the virus's impact – over 600,000 wild birds and 55,000 marine mammals affected, with elephant seal populations experiencing 95% pup mortality in some colonies. Learn how viral mutations enabled the jump to marine mammals, the ecological importance of Antarctica's scavenging skuas, and the challenges of conducting disease surveillance in one of Earth's most remote regions while monitoring the virus's continued eastward spread toward Australia and New Zealand. 

Links

Ralph's academic profile: https://whc.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/people/ralph-vanstreels

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Nearly one-third of all parrot species are threatened with extinction, yet most people picture these charismatic birds as noisy pets in cages rather than the complex, emotionally intelligent wild creatures they truly are. In this captivating episode, host Dr. Cat Vendl speaks with Dr. Pat Latas, a founding member of the newly founded IUCN Wild Parrot Specialist Group, whose four-decade journey spans from rescuing a tiny house sparrow as a child to working with critically endangered kakapo on remote New Zealand islands.

Pat reveals how the illegal wildlife trade has exploded into a $40-60 billion global business fueled by social media. Discover why there's a "parrot people stigma" in conservation science, how 14 naturalized parrot species are thriving in Los Angeles (with some endangered Mexican species now more abundant in California than their native range), and why Pat combines her scientific illustration skills with conservation work to protect these beloved yet threatened birds.

Links

Newly founded IUCN Wild Parrot Specialist Group

Parrot Crisis Summit

Pat’s art work

Wanna get in touch with Pat Latas? Email her here: Patricia.Latas[at]ssc.iucn.org

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A snowstorm that closed highways led English literature student Kate Huyvaert to an unexpected path—becoming one of North America's leading experts on wild sheep disease. From discovering that 25% of albatross chicks aren't raised by their biological fathers to unraveling the devastating cycle of respiratory disease threatening bighorn sheep across the American West, Kate's journey spans fleas on prairie dogs, boobies with complete sexual agency, and the deadly mycoplasma bacteria creating chronic carriers in wild sheep populations.

Kate introduces her innovative "kaleidoscope" approach to disease ecology, moving beyond simple models to embrace the beautiful complexity of host-pathogen interactions. This episode showcases how choosing your own adventure in science can lead to transformative wildlife health research, offering hope for cracking the code on chronic disease carriers while highlighting the interconnected world of domestic animals, wildlife, and human health.

Links

https://vetmed.wsu.edu/our-team/wsu-profile/kate.huyvaert/

https://www.wildsheepfoundation.org/about/praboard

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Join host Dr. Cat Vendl as she meets Dr. Nick Doidge, zoo veterinarian and researcher, working to save the world's rarest insect – the Lord Howe Island Stick Insect, nicknamed the "tree lobster."

Thought extinct for 80 years, these living fossils were dramatically rediscovered on a volcanic rock stack in the Pacific Ocean. But after bringing them back from just two individuals, a new threat emerged: deadly bacterial infections threatening the entire captive population.

Discover how Nick has developed cutting-edge diagnostic tools to detect the pathogenic bacterial strains ahead of the insects' planned reintroduction to Lord Howe Island next year. 

This episode reveals the intricate science behind saving a species that survived impossible odds on a cliff face in the middle of the ocean.

Links

Nick's profile on the One Health Research Group at Melbourne Uni

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In honor of International Day of the World's Indigenous Peoples on Aug 9, join host Dr. Cat Vendl for a special episode featuring two powerful Indigenous voices in health and healing. Meet Dr. Nicole Redvers, a member of the Deninu K'ue First Nation and Western Research Chair in Indigenous Planetary Health, who reveals how Indigenous healers have always treated humans and animals as interconnected beings. Then hear from Angaangaq, a traditional healer from Greenland whose spiritual mission is to "melt the ice in the heart of men."

From Arctic seal hunting rituals that honor life to the simple power of saying "good morning," discover how Indigenous wisdom about balance, respect, and gratitude offers essential guidance for wildlife health professionals. A transformative conversation about breaking down silos, building bridges between knowledge systems, and remembering that healing begins with recognizing our interconnectedness with all life.

Links

Learn more about Nicole's and Angaangaq's wisdom and work.

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Join host Dr. Cat Vendl as she ventures into Uganda's misty mountains to meet Dr. Nelson Bukamba, one of the world's few gorilla doctors providing life-saving veterinary care to our planet's most endangered relatives. Nelson's journey from a heartbroken 10-year-old making a promise to his dying dog Simba to treating wild mountain gorillas is nothing short of extraordinary.

From 3 AM wake-up calls to tracking gorilla families across 321 square kilometers of impenetrable forest, Nelson reveals what it's really like to provide medical care to patients who don't exactly line up for treatment. Discover how these gentle giants weathered the COVID-19 pandemic and how Nelson's cutting-edge research on "cryptic" parasites is unraveling the invisible threads connecting gorilla health to human communities. With fewer than 1,063 mountain gorillas remaining in the wild, Nelson represents a new generation of conservation veterinarians using both field medicine and laboratory science to protect our closest living relatives – one gorilla at a time.

Links
https://www.gorilladoctors.org

https://www.facebook.com/gorilladoctors

https://bsky.app/profile/gorilladoctors.bsky.social

https://www.linkedin.com/company/gorilla-doctors/

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Join host Dr. Cat Vendl as she ventures into Wyoming's vast wilderness to meet Dr. Samantha Allen, the state's wildlife veterinarian who juggles budget spreadsheets and helicopter captures of bighorn sheep. From her unforgettable first WDA conference moment wielding a Stryker autopsy saw on a porpoise, Sam shares her journey from small-town kid told she'd only work with "cows and cats" to tackling Wyoming's diverse wildlife health challenges.

Discover how chronic wasting disease has become endemic across Wyoming, why older male deer might be the main disease spreaders, and the surprising prevalence of rabbit hemorrhagic disease since 2020. But perhaps most intriguingly, meet the adorable swift fox—a resilient little species where 92% test positive for parvovirus exposure, raising fascinating questions about disease transmission between wild and domestic animals in America's wild west.

Link
https://wgfd.wyo.gov/wyoming-wildlife/wildlife-disease-and-health

We'd love to hear from you ... share your thoughts, feedback and ideas.