September 2020 blog by Yashaswini Modak, third-year vet student at the Royal Veterinary College.

Hi, I’m Yashaswini – President of the Zoological Society here at the Royal Veterinary College. I have been a part of The Expedition Project Ambassador team since 2019.
Welcome to my first in a series of monthly Veterinary Student blogs.
Since August 2020, alongside The Expedition Project, we’ve been doing live streams about conservation medicine with Dr. Peter Rogers and students from Nottingham and the Dick Vet School in Edinburgh. After finishing our most recent live stream, I thought I would share some of the lessons I’ve taken away from speaking with Dr. Rogers.
The first one is extremely universal: education is power. As Dr. Rogers puts it, “saving one pangolin won’t save the species”. A hard truth to swallow, but an important one – when we’re strategizing on how best to conserve the animals we love so much, often we get swept up with the veterinary medicine of it all. We wonder which surgeries will save them, or how we can modify our drug dosages, or how physiotherapy might help. We often forget the grimy truth right in front of us: all the surgeries in the world won’t help until we put effort into educating the public about wildlife trade, especially for species like the pangolin. The cultural belief that pangolin scales have medicinal qualities have been fostered over many generations and as a result people purchase them for help with arthritis or lactation supplements. Education about illegal wildlife trade and the inaccuracies that it is based upon is very important, and thinking about how you can incorporate education into conservation efforts is absolutely crucial.
This brings us to our second lesson: young kids are the future, and educating them is our way of raising the next generation of wildlife advocates. Dr. Rogers talked to us about how he aims to break this generational cycle of passing down harmful folklore by actually bringing in local school children in batches of about 5-10 and letting them observe pangolin treatment while the animals are sedated. He also talks to them about how the scales have no proven medicinal quality, and walks them through the difficult recovery process. This is a wonderful way to make sure the pangolin is not just treated but also used to educate children. Of course with any rescued animal, ethics must be considered: pangolins are what we call stress susceptible (they are easily stressed out and this can often lead to adverse medical consequences for them), so Dr. Rogers will only use them to teach kids when they have been sedated to avoid causing any additional harm to the animal.
When it comes to helping out, education isn’t the only way to advocate for conservation! We discussed the system of donations and how increasingly large their presence has become online, from GoFundMe pages to online petitions. Dr. Rogers shed some very interesting light on donations and how they can often not actually help – a shame, really. It is important to read the fine print before donating to make sure you know where your money is going to. Better yet, find a specific project and get in contact with them about a donation for something specific – IV fluids, sleeping bags, feed formulas.. especially if you’re donating a large amount, make sure to contact a specific organisation first – it will likely be the most helpful way to use your money for good.
The final topic of discussion was on having a thriving career as a wildlife vet, something I personally aspire to. A notoriously competitive field of veterinary medicine with few opportunities for learning and often requiring long hours and a lot of travel, the prospect of being involved with conservation can be daunting for many, and Dr. Rogers is aspirational. He had one piece of very simple advice: “always grab any opportunity you get with both hands”.
Sources
‘Pangolins’, National Geographic, (2019, April 10) https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/group/pangolins/
Stress Susceptibility in Pangolin Genomes (2016, October 26) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5052048/
I recommend you check out these courses:
Wildlife Vet Online Module 1: Cheetah Management
Wildlife Vet Online Module 2: The Rhino Revolution – Part 1
Wildlife Vet Online Module 3: The Rhino Revolution – Part 2
Wildlife Vet Online Module 4: Pangolin Protection
And I even have a course that i was involved in developing here:
Junior Wildlife Vet and Ecology Module 1: Animal Identification
Livestream Audio
September 2020
Music intro until 6:10
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