National Wildlife Health Center Investigates Educator Guide

“The National Wildlife Health Center is sort of what it says. We're a national center and we receive carcasses from refuges and state management areas all around the country, usually from state biologists, federal biologists, tribal biologists,” says disease investigation chief Dr. Scott Wright. Those carcasses shipped overnight to the center are most often samples taken from large animal die-offs. It’s the job of the center to determine the cause of death.

“Much like the CDC would do for human health, or the USDA would do for agricultural animals, for livestock and so forth, that's the role we play for wildlife,” says Wright.

At the heart of the center is a level 3 bio-safety lab where the animal samples are processed and examined through necropsy, the animal version of an autopsy. “Every case that comes in is a potential real challenge,” says veterinary pathologist Dr. David Green. “I sit down and look at all of these different lab results; the toxicology, the poison tests, the virus cultures, the bacterial cultures. And I have to put all of these pieces of information together to determine why was that animal sick, why did that animal die or why did 500 birds die at this site.”

It was 5000 red winged blackbirds dying in a small Arkansas town on New Year’s Eve 2010 that briefly thrust the work of the Center into the national spotlight. “Oh there were just all sorts of clever names applied to the event,” remembers Green. “'Aflockolypse' was, I think, the cleverest.”

Harbinger of the end times, covert military testing, magnetic disruption, all manner of strange theories were applied to the event. The intense interest surprised the NWHC staff, says Wright. “There were people calling me at my home at night, on weekends wanting to know what was going on.”

The cause of death, determined after numerous bird necropsies, was much more banal than the theories. “All of the tests and cultures that we did for infectious diseases and parasites and chemicals came back negative,” says Green. “Basically it came down to, we couldn't find anything other than physical injuries, what we call blunt force trauma in the birds.”

Those necropsy findings, combined with field reports of New Year’s fireworks, and the fact that blackbirds are terrible night flyers came together to paint a picture of startled birds flying into each other and stationary objects and succumbing to traumatic injury.

This most plausible explanation didn’t satisfy the most dedicated conspiracy-theorists according to Wright. “It really sort of floored us. We didn't expect that. We didn't expect to be not believed.”

That’s something that Dr. Wright, who is soon to retire from the Center, finds a troubling omen for the future of science and public understanding. “Science is not being believed,” he says. “That's not a good sign, because there's too much important stuff coming that we need to be stepping up and telling everybody, ‘This is what's going on.’ And they hopefully will believe us.”

Learning at the tidepools. Credit: Amy Gotliffe

This question comes up endlessly in the world of environmental education. How do you inspire a person to learn, care and then take action for the environment? As someone whose professional goal is to inspire earth stewardship, I often ask anyone who will answer this big question.

Many are active stewards because they formed a connection with nature during childhood. This bond is deep, instinctive and primal, and was merely coaxed out by a particular, yet often simple experience outdoors: playing in the woods, on the rocks, in the creek, in the garden, in the dirt, up the tree, with the roly polys, in the ditch, in the pond, in the vacant armory (ok that was me), etc. Somewhere deep inside, a door was opened to the potential to really care. This is why Nature Deficit Disorder is so disturbing, as we wonder if children growing up void of trees and ditches and ponds have forged the same bonds.

When a child's natural curiosity is nurtured by an adult, they will likely develop an even stronger connection. Some will have this head start, yet it is never too late.

So, how does a person then become an active steward?

One model is practiced by Roots & Shoots, the activism branch of the Jane Goodall Institute, and that is: Knowledge, Compassion and Action. All three experiences, in no particular order, can lead to a sustainable behavior change. Take caring for frogs as an example and consider three different people and paths to change:

• Sam is academically inquisitive about frogs and conservation, and is self-motivated to research the subject on the internet. He begs his parents to take him on a local frog conservation program and through this action develops a deep compassion for frogs.
• Stella read a non-fiction story about a particular pond that was suddenly quiet one season, after years of being a frog croaking Mecca. She feels compassion for this species and habitat and attends a lecture on the subject. Once in the know, she donates funds to a frog conservation project.
• Nik is neither interested nor compassionate about frogs, but finds himself on a service learning outing with his 9th grade class. There, he sees dead and floating frogs with his own eyes and collects frog eggs with his own hands. The experience inspires him to pay attention in class the next week and learn more about it, eventually leading him to feel greater connection and compassion.

With this model in mind, I suppose my job is to ensure that all three options are easily available to our visiting students and guests. So I encourage all you attend an adult lecture or ZooCamp program, take action with the Arroyo Viejo Creek Keepers, or feel compassion by staring through long eyelashes into the deep brown eyes of a camel… or frog.

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Comparing a Head Started turtle to one that hibernated in the wild.Alright, I am going to say the "C" word: these little guys are cute! As an environmental professional, I know this is a word I am not supposed to use, but it is impossible not to.

Barely bigger than a quarter, the baby Western Pond Turtles were drawing a cooing crowd of Oakland Zoo staff in their new, but temporary, home in the back room of the Bug House. Here, our animal management staff will happily feed and care for them until they grow big enough to fend for themselves back in their home in Lake County.

Nicholas Geist of Sonoma State University began a study of these natives when he feared that global warming would affect their future. As the sex of baby turtles is determined by temperature, he was curious if future high temperatures would cause only one future sex. In his exploration of the issue, he found these turtles to have some other serious current environmental challenges.

To begin with, development near turtle habitat intrudes upon food availability and nesting sites for females, as they lay their eggs away from the water on the land nearby. American Bullfrogs, a non-native, predate upon the hatchlings, and Red Eared Slider Turtles, also a non-native, compete for basking space and food. These turtles are commonly sold at pet stores without proper instructions and subsequently released by owners thinking they are doing the right thing. They grow twice the size and are more assertive than the Western Pond Turtles, and pretty much take over.

In a partnership with Sonoma County Fish and Wildlife Commission and Sonoma State University, the Head Start program sends Oakland Zoo staff and Sonoma State University students into the wild to collect eggs which are incubated at the university. Once hatched, they are transferred to the zoo to be raised for the first year under optimal conditions. By creating the best possible environment for the turtles, they grow 3-4 times faster than they would in the wild, where they would normally hibernate. At the end of the first year, the juvenile turtles will then be released back into their original lake, having grown too large to be eaten by those pesky bull frogs and the big mouth bass, and able to compete with those bully Red Eared Sliders. They will be bigger, smarter and…head started. Sigh…we will be so proud.

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I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Dr. Robert Drewes, the esteemed Curator and Chairman of the Department of Herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, upon his return from the Gulf of Guinea where he has been leading research teams over the past decade to study the unique flora and fauna of the islands.

He was still tired from his travels, but his exuberant personality and lively sense of humor were still intact despite his jet-lag. He supplied me a DVD of photos that illustrated his adventurous exploits over the years – such as grappling a giant python snake and mucking about in swamps at night in search of specimens – and proof that he certainly had a lot of fun in the field throughout the course of his long and productive career.

Learn more about Dr. Drewes and his passion for Africa and frogs in the "Why I Do Science" profile, and be sure to check out our story "Disappearing Frogs" about Bay Area researchers investigating the decline of frog populations.

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