Vets training vets: Dr.Pilar Fish and Dr.Katherine Costa
Between July 13th and 25th of this year, Dr.Pilar Fish and one of her interns, Kira Hydock of University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, came down to Ecuador. They brought supplies donated by the National Aviary for the new clinic with them: medicines that are extremely costly to get in the country due to import taxes, and surgical tools and equipment that's almost impossible to find. The trip was originally planned as a teaching moment for us four vet students, Ernesto, and the zookeepers, but Dr.Fish was tasked with another project a few weeks before her arrival: prepare to train the incoming vet, Dr.Katherine Costa of Caracas, Venezuela.
For the first month of Tim, Walker, and my stay, confiscations had been few (a tamarin, a couple Amazonian turtle species), but the minute Dr.Fish and Dr.Costa arrived, the cases trickled in: an injured Slaty thrush, two Barn owls, a Stygian owl, a Ball python, a Blue-headed parrot. We spent their first three or four days seeing the emergency arrivals and getting a tour of the zoo from Ernesto, who graciously put aside a large chunk of his time to make sure we maximized Dr.Fish's consulting time. She has worked with 42 organizations on (now) three continents over the 21 years of her practice, so she knows a lot about what makes a zoo or rescue center work! It was amazing to see her, Dr.Costa, and Ernesto brainstorming about how to improve the clinic, the exhibits, and the quality of care for some of the animals with special needs.
I'm going to tell the story mostly in the pictures, as usual. If you want to check out the first half of our summer (when it was just me, Walker Roberts, and Tim Beichner) and our preliminary data collection for our avian parasite survey on the Pionus, Aratinga, Amazona, and Geranoaetus species, check out this previous post:
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| Students Tim Beichner and Kira Hydock enjoying an Andean morning view on director Ernesto Arbelaez's rooftop. |
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| Geochelone denticulata, known as Tortugas Motelos in Ecuadorian Spanish. |
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| Elandris, the Black Chested Buzzard education eagle! She's Amaru's falconry bird. |
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| Dr.Pilar Fish of the National Aviary with Ernesto Arbelaez, zoo director, with all the donated supplies from the Aviary. |
Dr.Fish brought down all of her preferred medicines for zoo animal and wildlife triage, as well as some essentials that are expensive to buy in Ecuador. We got to work using them immediately. On her zoo tours, Dr.Fish spotted a number of immediately treatable health conditions in the animals: ground tortoises with neck abscesses, a Galapagos tortoise with skin abnormalities to be managed, a Blue and Gold macaw with a broken blood feather, a troop of squirrel monkeys with a chlamydia outbreak (probably not the kind you're thinking of!), and abrasions that looked like mites on Amaru's two newborn lions. That was just the beginning! The newly arrived microscope was crucial to the proper diagnosis of some of these problems. Dr.Costa was able to do cytology for the turtle abscesses, and skin scrapes on the lions to check for mites; she used it many more times over the course of Dr.Fish's stay, and is still using it today to monitor animals for parasites and bacterial infections.
Dr.Costa's previous training was in small animal medicine (cats and dogs), but in Venezuela, she would read up on wildlife medicine to be prepared to take any injured wildlife into her clinic should the need arise, which it did with increasing frequency as she became known for successful treatments and releases. Katherine was old friends with Jose Vieira, the herpetologist and photographer from the group Tropical Herping working as Amaru's reptile keeper. He told her to check out their opening for a zoo vet, and she jumped on the opportunity to leave Caracas. For those of you who are unaware, the politics and economy of Venezuela are extremely unstable under current President Nicolas Maduro, and the violence and goods shortages in Caracas and most of the country are driving people like Katherine and Jose to leave. It's terrible that they can't comfortably do their work in their country, but we're glad to have them both at Amaru.
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| The summer vet crew from left to right: Tim Beichner from Kansas State Veterinary School, Dr.Katherine Costa from Venezuela, Dr.Pilar Fish of the National Aviary, Kira Hydock of Penn State Veterinary School, Walker Roberts from University of Florida Veterinary School, Nikki Becich from Tufts Veterinary School, and Ernesto Arbelaez, director of Bioparque Amaru Zoo and president of the Ecuadorian AZA. |
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| A confiscated juvenile Squirrel monkey facing socialization challenges. |
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| Dr.Fish explaining proper socialization and natural behavioral enrichment for young Squirrel monkeys. |
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| Tayra (a tropical mustelid) with a dental abscess under medical management. |
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| Zoo rounds and teaching time with Dr.Fish in the biology library for the vet students. |
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| Dr. Katherine Costa of Caracas, Venezuela, Amaru's temporary (hopefully permanent in the future!) veterinarian. |
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| Dr.Fish befriending one of Ecuador's many strays on a trip to see Andean Condor research sites in the Andes mountains. |
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| Future zoo enthusiast, Ernesto junior. |
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| Students and the Arbelaez family at Amaru and the Peregrine Fund's Andean Condor research site in the southern Andes. |
Dr.Fish was able to review major themes in animal enrichment, socialization, husbandry, and specific medical needs for Katherine over the course of her visit. The common deparistization drug ivermectin is toxic in turtles, birds who arrive as trauma cases should be treated with this combination of drugs, these monkeys need more heat, more housing. She came up with basic treatment plans for many of the zoo's animal groups suffering from manageable, chronic health conditions, and preventative plans for the others. And finally, she even got to delve into pathology when three of the zoo animals died over the course of her stay. Having someone trained to do necropsies and look for the appropriate warning signs in deceased animals at Amaru is a huge benefit to the animals that were housed near or with those animals; Dr.Fish was able to treat some Wooly and Capuchin monkeys for extreme gastric ulcers when the problem came up in a Wooly monkey who died a month and a half after her confiscation to Amaru.
Getting to learn alongside Dr.Fish and Katherine was such a privilege for the four of us who are still in vet school, too. It's great to be exposed to mentors that give you an idea of what your end-goal should be.
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| Searching for cause of death in a once-thought-extinct species of Atelopus frog from the Center for Conservation of Amphibians at Amaru. Such examinations are crucial to improving the medical care and husbandry of critically endangered species breeding programs. |
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| Dr.Fish explaining pathology during a necropsy of a recently arrived and recently deceased Wooly monkey. Monkeys that arrive confiscated can be in very poor condition, and doing this necropsy gave us the insight we needed to treat other individuals who arrived in the same confiscation so that they didn't meet the same fate. |
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| Necropsy on a newly arrived Caiman who died unexpectedly. The ientification of specific bacterial infections during necropsy gives the vets an idea of how to preventatively treat other animals who have been exposed to infected individuals. |
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| Tim running through the basics of a physical exam with Dr.Katherine Costa on a Black Chested Buzzard Eagle. |
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| Doing blood draws and general physical exams on six Black Chested Buzzard eagles in one of Amaru's large aviary exhibits. |
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| Doing blood draws and general physical exams on six Black Chested Buzzard eagles in one of Amaru's large aviary exhibits. |
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| Kira Hydock learning about social behaviors in wooly monkeys from Dr.Fish. Training animals to be more comfortable around vets makes physical exams and medical procedures much less stressful for the animal and the vet. |
Dr.Fish, although financially supported by the National Aviary in her travels as part of our collaboration with Amaru, made a huge sacrifice in spending all of her holiday time working tirelessly to help improve the conditions at Amaru. We all learned a ton from her, and by expanding Dr.Costa's knowledge base so aggressively in those two short weeks, she will have benefited hundreds of animals through her teaching. She's a rare type of doctor and educator, and like I mentioned before, it was an honor to get to learn from her in a setting like Amaru!
Hopefully we can go back and do it all again sometime soon.
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| Dr.Fish helping Dr.Costa assess a group of tortoises with skin infections and lethargy. |
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Triage and intake physical exams for three confiscated owls that arrived in banana crates to Amaru.
This is Asio stygius, a Stygian owl. |
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| Dr.Fish describing new donated drugs and equipment to Ernesto. Thanks, National Aviary! |
It's amazing to see how much the zoo changes from year to year: the quality of nutrition and basic husbandry has drastically improved since I arrived in 2013, despite the continued deficiency in manpower due to lack of funds. They do SO MUCH with so little. In brainstorming the next steps forward for the zoo, Dr.Fish envisions more electricity in areas where animals need supplemental heat (most of the zoo is without power on the mountainside where it's located), more holding areas for separation of quarantined, recuperating, and rehabilitating wildlife that arrives, and the proper equipment to populate the intensive care unit and nursery in the clinic. Her drawings below outline some of the problems and proposed solutions for Amaru, but it's still just such a question of funds! Two or three more zookeepers are crucial to continuing to improve the standards of living for animals we can't release---and funding is crucial to keep improving the facilities to the point where Amaru can achieve one of its greatest goals: the professional rehabilitation and re-release of confiscated animals to their native environments in Ecuador.
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| Dr.Fish waking the group through a future structure for effective rehabilitation and release programs for wildlife. |
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| Dr.Fish's ideas for restructuring holding and quarantine areas in Amaru. |
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| Guambi, Amaru's rescued Andean Condor juvenile. |
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| Dr.Fish showing the Amaru Zoo staff new techniques for safe capture and handling of Andean condors! The tube reduces stress for Guambi, if people aren't holding his head manually, and protects the vets and zookeepers from being bitten. |
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| Physical exam, blood draw, and basic medical care for Guambi. |
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| The team outside of the National Aviary's sponsored Condor Aviary at Amaru! |
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| Dr.Fish teaching the theory and anatomy of broken blood feather extraction. |
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| Dr.Fish teaching the theory and anatomy of broken blood feather extraction. There was a Blue and Gold Macaw with a broken blood feather on exhibit at Amaru, and we went through the steps of when and how to treat the problem. |
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| Jose Vieira, a herpetologist from Venezuela and Amaru's current reptile keeper, helps restrain a non-venomous snake for physical exam. |
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| The view from Bioparque Amaru Zoo at sunrise. |
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| Recheck exams on the Stygian Owl! Dr.Katherine Costa is in charge this time. |
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| Physical exam on the Stygian Owl. |
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| One of the Orange-winged Amazons in Amaru's off-exhibit holding area. Because Amaru wants to promote a conservation message and discourage the practice of taking wild animals as pets, all parrots who arrive talking are kept off-exhibit. |
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| Dr.Fish bird watching from Ernesto's rooftop mid-Andean-morning! Amanda Vega, Ernesto's wife, has executed a number of native planting projects at Amaru, meaning that there are many native Andean species living in restored habitat on zoo property. |
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| One of the tortoises undergoing treatment for skin abscesses at Amaru. |
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| Dr.Katherine Costa teaching better monkey behavior to the juvenile Squirrel monkey. |
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| Dr.Fish and Kira Hydock with an Andean specialty: tea made from horchata flower, lemongrass, and the chuquiraga flower. |
It was incredible to be part of an effort that made such a difference in so short a time. We're all rooting for Dr.Katherine as she continues to lead the team in caring for all the animals that arrive at Amaru: 33 animals over five taxa have arrived at Amaru since we left in mid-August. Her work is hard, and we're in contact with her to give the advice we can from afar until we can return. She's reading and learning and saving: she's removed an owl's infected eye, given supportive care to emaciated monkeys, disimpacted a snake, done orthopedic surgery on a deer, and much more in just the last few weeks. Suerte, Katherine!
Are you inspired to support Amaru as it continues to improve its conditions for the nearly 800 confiscated animals on zoo premises, and as it moves forward towards the goal of having the veterinary support to save, rehabilitate, and release confiscated animals back into the Ecuadorian wild? For convenience and certain tax-deductible donations, you can give through the National Aviary’s online donation system. Choose the option donate to "Conservation and Field Research Department", and put "Ecuador," "Andean Condors," "Bioparque Amaru Zoo" or how you would like to see the money used in the "In Honor Of" descriptor box.
Here is the link to the online donation system:
https://www.aviary.org/Make-a-Donation
Thanks for reading! Keep checking in for intermittent updates throughout the year. If all goes well, we'll be back for more in summer of 2016!
Cheers,
The Aviary-Amaru team
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