Hello everyone, my name is Gemma, and this evening I'm gonna be talking about veterinary nursing gone wild. So how to take a walk on the wild side. So since qualifying as an RVN in 2015, I've been really, really fortunate to work with an array of wild species, both here in the UK and abroad.

And I think, we often forget that as RVNs we're really lucky that our qualification enables us to enjoy such a diverse career paths. Just out of my friendship group at university, you know, I've got friends that are in referral practise, myself working with, with wildlife, we've got friends working in laboratories. Our career as RVNs is really, really diverse, and I'm hoping that this presentation will highlight some of those different wildlife pathways to RVNs, focusing on some interesting case studies, and cases that I've been able to work with over the years and hopefully sort of highlighting those transferable skills, that we definitely bring from small animal practise or companion animals, whether that's equine or farm as well.

And. Whether you intend on sort of making a permanent shift to work with wildlife or exotics, or you simply just want to enjoy using your nursing skills on sort of a range of species, I really hope that this presentation will sort of encourage you to take that first step and sort of inspire you to get out there and explore the world of veterinary. So my journey so far, so I thought I would just do a little sort of intro or a recap of what I've done and where I've come from.

So I started off at the Royal Veterinary College, where I qualified from a foundation degree and then I topped up to do a bachelor's and I qualified as a nurse in 2015, finished my BSC in 2016. I then worked in, the Queen Mother Hospital for a year as a, as a referral nurse. And during that time I went on a two week sort of vets Go Wild experience, out in South Africa, where I got my sort of first taste of working in the field, and working in conservation.

That led me to undertaking a master's degree in wild animal biology and health, at the Royal Veterinary College in collaboration with the Zoological Society of London. And during that time I spent a few months over in South Africa again, doing a wildlife internship. And this just really heightened, my love of working with wildlife, working in the field, working in conservation.

When I came back from South Africa, I spent a year just working in practise, sort of working, in a small animal practise, but also with British wildlife, when it inevitably came into the practise. I then went on a volunteering trip where majority of the sort of case studies I've got this evening are from. Where I volunteered in Southeast Asia, Indonesia, Australasia, and Fiji and worked with numerous wildlife charities and small animal charities.

When I came back to the UK, I worked in a small animal practise, and it was a really busy practise, and we did tend to have quite a lot of wildlife, British wildlife cases, and that really, really sort of intrigued me to take, my most recent position as a wildlife nurse at Tey Winkle Wildlife Hospital. Where I worked for two years, rehabilitating, and hand rearing injured and sick wildlife. Currently I'm back in first opinion practise and, hopefully this just shows how sort of unlinear a career in wildlife can be.

I've sort of, dabbled in and out with with wildlife, volunteering and as a permanent job, and hopefully that can just show you that it's not necessarily that you have to have a full-time career in wildlife. It's something you can definitely sort of pick up and, and sort of veer off as and when sort of suits you. So working with wildlife, so working with wildlife can definitely be as exciting as it sounds.

And you know, I've got some really cool photos throughout this presentation and, and whilst it is absolutely amazing, you get to work in really beautiful parts of the world, really exotic parts of the world, caring for amazing sort of wildlife and exotic animals. But I think it's important to remember that you must be able to sort of quick be quick thinking and react really well to any situation, often thinking outside the box. Obviously in day to day practise we do have to do that, and we do have to be sort of on top of our game all the time.

In wildlife often we don't have quite as much sort of evidence-based nursing, so being able to be quick and react to any sort of situation is really, really important. Leading on from that, I think it's really important to be confident in your sort of fundamental nursing skills. Often you'll be working with really endangered species or really vulnerable species, and it may even be a species where, you know, that's on the brink and they're, sort of severely endangered, and, and each individual then is really, really important to conservation.

So it's just important to remember that. Now, wildlife nursing, as we said, can take you to some really, really remote parts of the world. I think it's really important when you're working in different countries to remember that some of these countries may have really different ethical and religious beliefs, compared to what we have sort of back here at home.

It may be that you're in a country, or working in a, on a conservation project where they don't believe in euthanasia. So sometimes that can be quite difficult. So it's just important to be respectful of that, and just be mindful when you're when you're working in these countries.

Now, as exciting as nursing with wildlife is, there's absolutely a lot of paperwork that comes with it. Obviously not only for yourself, but sometimes when you're moving animals, there's visas, there's licencing, transport documentations, and then of course just organisation in general. A lot of the time when you're working in the field, sometimes you'll be working out of a truck or or a vehicle or a helicopter or a plane.

And everything that you have with you, that is all that you have. So it's not really the same as when you're in practise, where you know you've got everything and you know it's in a cupboard somewhere. If you haven't put it in the bag or in the truck, you haven't got it.

So it is a lot of organisation, and often you're in a really, really remote area and, and you can't get too, too much equipment. So it's just basically what you've got with you. So it's important to be really organised, make sure you've got everything, so that you don't get caught out.

And I've popped on here probably one of the most rewarding parts of working with wildlife abroad. It's sort of offering your expertise to clinics and to, . Volunteer programmes that have sort of little access to, to sort of UK trained veterinary professionals.

I think sometimes we underestimate our qualifications and the and the skills that we have, and often conservation projects and volunteer projects are really, really grateful to have, really highly trained registered veterinary nurses coming over who can help sort of educate staff, educate the local community. And a lot of these projects do rely on nurses to, yeah, to teach their staff and to help improve the sort of patient care, and that's regardless of species. So even if you come from a companion animal background, you can definitely improve patient care and the standards of patient care regardless of whatever species it is that you're working with.

So, taking that first step into working with wildlife, I think it's important to remember that this can start on your doorstep, you know, volunteering with local wildlife charities, exploring what's in your area, wildlife charities abroad as well. Obviously always really, really grateful for, for volunteers, but definitely, definitely have a look in your local area, . There are also internships and externships that you can do, quite a few of the UK zoos.

I know that London Zoo and Bristol Zoo have internships and externships, so definitely worth looking into. Often abroad, conservation projects as well, or or or veterinary practises, and veterinary services will have veterinary wildlife internships. So again, a really good way to sort of have a little taster of what it would be like to be a full-time wildlife nurse.

And then of course it's sort of weighing up the UK versus overseas. From experience, I would say that you definitely get more hands-on experience, in the field, working abroad. However, saying that, obviously if you do volunteer at a UK zoo or a UK wildlife hospital, it also, sort of gives you a sort of foot in the door almost, to, to those, projects and, sort of charities and organisations.

They know your face. They they know how well you work. So if job opportunities do come up sometimes by volunteering in these these projects over here in the UK it can, it can just get your foot in the door and your sort of name to a face and will really heighten if you do decide to send your CV to to one of these organisations.

Obviously, if you are going to be volunteering, there is a cost involved. Volunteering fees, a lot of charities do rely sort of solely on donations, especially in remote areas working with sort of endangered species. So sometimes the, organisations will ask for a volunteer fee.

And this cost can definitely add up if you're doing multiple projects. Some charities and volunteer projects will accept sort of veterinary donations. So if you're going from practise and you've got equipment that you no longer use or your practise is happy to sort of sponsor to send sort of bandage material or needles, syringes, medication, you may be able to sort of pay for a volunteering project that way.

I think again it's important to remember, day to day costs, things like food and accommodation, cost of vaccines, passports, or health and travel insurance, and obviously you'll have to take time off work, so working at holidays, etc. And that leads me on to sort of time. So obviously if you do have to take time off work, remembering that often some of these volunteer projects have a minimum stay, so they may suggest to you that, oh, you have to come for 3 months because we'll train you up for a month and then, we can sort of use your expertise and skills for another 2 months.

So all things to think about if you are thinking about volunteering, abroad. So moving back to sort of closer to home, so working with our British wildlife, now like I said earlier, this can start in your own practise, providing veterinary care to sick and injured, British wildlife that may be brought in by members of the public. And it's definitely something that, RVNs can be, sort of really poignant in, in their practise, making a wildlife triage protocol for people to follow, .

I think that's really, really important. You can pull ideas from from online, from British wildlife webinars, triage webinars, and I think it's important to ignore that sort of fly or die attitude that . Unfortunately, some practises do take, and, you know, take the time to assess and treat and potentially even rehabilitate some of these wild animals at your practise, or if more appropriate, transfer them to a local wildlife hospital.

You can build a really good rapport with your local wildlife hospital, and you know, ask, ask for advice whenever needed. Most wildlife charities and hospitals will be more than happy to talk you through, cases and how to deal with certain ailments in in British wildlife, and you can build that really nice rapport and, you can even volunteer at your local wildlife charity or or hospital. Either in their veterinary department, in their husbandry department, so sort of hand rearing and cleaning out kennels and things like that, or even as a rescuer, and that can really enable you to get hands-on experience, handling with a range of species.

So, I think we often. Forget that we've got some amazing wildlife, here in the UK, you know, our foxes, our badgers, our deer species, our birds of prey, our beloved hedgehogs, there's, there's lots of lots of species that you can, get some really good hands on handling experience with. And even if not hands on sort of handling.

You can volunteer to do citizen science projects in your local area. The Garden Wildlife Health Project is a really good one, which is a huge database where you can sort of report any illnesses of any animals that you find in your in your garden, and it's a really, really nice way of sort of giving back to our British wildlife and helping to record, and it'll teach you a lot about ecology as well, which is always really useful when you're working with species that you've never worked with before. So working in conservation, now RVNs can have a huge, huge role working within, within conservation and conserving species working out in the field.

Often working alongside amazing biologists to sort of track and record data about free roaming species, so I've got some photos there of doing aerial counts, so using a helicopter or an or a plane, to count species. There's also, I've got a little photo there of telemetry, so that particular instance we were tracking a a chio with a telemetry collar. It's a really, really useful way of of tracking species, so you can get, get involved with the biologists, and help on this sort of ecology side of of conservation.

Another really important part of conservation is definitely herd health. So sort of preventative healthcare using prophylactic treatments, so that might be wormers, that, you know, you could be treating a sort of herd of buffalo, etc. Leading on from that breeding programmes, so, population control, especially if you're working sort of, definitely in South Africa and other parts of Africa where populations are managed, it's really important to have a good knowledge of, of breeding programmes and how to work with breeding programmes.

So contraceptives that, you know, we'll use in practise. So you'll see purin implants. I have got a case study that we'll talk about that a little bit more later.

And helping with translocation, so moving animals from one place to another. And part of that is definitely collecting data. There are some really, really amazing biobanks where, people and biologists and vets and vet nurses have collected blood, hair, and tissue, and they can all be put into biobanks, and used for, for research and in conservation, and it can really make a huge difference to conserved species.

Additionally to that, providing emergency veterinary care to endangered species in the field, of course, if we're working with these species, and they're in sort of conserved areas, particularly in places like South Africa where a lot of the, populations will be enclosed in fencing, they're not sort of free roaming, they can get entangled in fencing, they. They can have fights with each other, they can get stuck in snares from sort of poachers and things like that. So providing that emergency care, which again, we can absolutely use our transferable skills from companion care and working with cats and dogs.

Another huge part of working in conservation for nurses is definitely encouraging, fellow veterinary staff and, and companies as well and and sort of big corporations to invest in conservation. And a really good example of this is definitely Mediett and working with the rhino crisis. So Mediet often sponsor equipment.

They raise money in their practises to help with rhino conservation and to help the vets that are on the ground working day to day and to help conserve rhinos. I think another really important part of working conservation is is sort of working with local communities, and a huge way that we can help conserve species is trying to help prevent human-wildlife conflict, and help mitigate human-wildlife conflict. So often this can be something such as offering incentive to whether it's local farmers or local people in the area that are being affected by wildlife.

A lot of our wild spaces are being encroached upon by increasing sort of farmland or increasing housing, and this is causing sort of controversy and and a difficult relationship between humans and wildlife, so. One example I can use was working out in Chiang Mai with the Elephant Nature Park and the wild elephant project where we actually set up a pop-up clinic, so a vaccine and neuter clinic for local farmers and local people, and these were farmers that were having a real issue in the area with wild elephants stealing their crops, by offering this incentive and, you know, neutering their dogs, vaccinating their pets and. And we were able to come to an arrangement where the elephants were given sort of fruit and vegetables which wasn't, weren't able to be sold to to members of the public, and they were taken to a sort of remote area where the elephants were encouraged to go, which meant that the farmers' fields and the farmers' crops were safe and their livelihood was safe, and that's just a really good example of how as RVNs we can help mitigate the human wildlife conflict and help conserve species.

So next, sort of moving on, from working in conservation, very, very similar, but working with wildlife charities. And this is sort of focusing on working with wildlife charities abroad. So volunteering your time to help charities in really, really remote regions with sort of limited resources and equipment, which you've already touched upon.

And assisting these charities with clinical work, so whether that is monitoring anaesthetics, taking blood samples, and putting animals on fluids, or whether it's husbandry work, and whether that's sort of cleaning out kennels, walking dogs, you know, creating enrichment for, for inpatients or whether it's, you know, helping to build enclosures for wild species. Working with these sort of charities as well to help provide veterinary care for endangered species, I think this is a really, really important role that RVNs can play, especially for, working with sort of traffic species, and highly persecuted species that are often, sort of found to be sold in sort of lucrative, illegal wildlife trade, and species in particular are pangolins, sharks, rhino, elephants, who are often sort of persecuted to be used in things like Chinese medicine. So whether that's for their scales, their fins, their horns, their tusks, and we can play a huge, huge role, working with these wildlife charities to, to provide emergency care to rescued animals, so we've got some photos here, of some, two pangolins at the top there receiving fluids.

That was a rescue mission where we were able to rescue nearly 200 pangolins that were being sort of smuggled in really, really awful conditions, and we were able to help the veterinary team provide emergency care and save quite a few of those of those pangolins who unfortunately would otherwise have perished so. You can see that we can play a mass massive role in in conservation and working with these wildlife charities. In addition to this, you know, helping to educate and pass on veterinary skills to charities that have, again, like we talked about earlier, that have really limited access to sort of trained professionals.

Obviously this also helps with sort of getting hands-on experience with wildlife, and you can definitely sort of adapt your companion animal skills to work with any species. And that takes us on to these transferable skills, so you may think, gosh, you know, I work with cats and dogs every day, how am I gonna be able to cope or how will I know how to work with endangered species or really, really large species or aggressive species. And I completely understand that, you know, working with wildlife, working with species that you're unfamiliar with can be really, really daunting.

But I think it's really important to remember that all those basic principles and those basic sort of day one nursing skills that we have, you can really easily apply to any species. And often when you go and work with these conservation projects, you're gonna be working with people who know this species really well, they know the best way to handle them, they know the best sort of medications to use, drugs to use. And I think, it's just, just really important to remember that these are all skills that we use every day that we're confidently using.

So if you're confident using those day one skills, there's no reason that you can't apply them to to any species. And that's things like taking bloods, working out drugs calculations, monitoring anaesthetics, placing catheters, hand rearing species, wound management and bandaging, all things that we do absolutely every day, and things that we can definitely transfer to, to, animals regardless of the species or regardless of whether you've worked with them before. So I'm going to move on now to some case studies.

So I've got sort of several several examples of where we can sort of use those transferable skills, use those skills that we use every day when nursing our cats, our dogs, our companion animals, horses, or even farm animals, and these are all case studies of working with some of the sort of world's most endangered and and trafficked and sort of persecuted species. So first up, we've got an Asian elephant, and this was an individual that sadly was recovering from a landmine injury. So this was Tycoon, she was an adult female elephant that unfortunately stood on a landmine before being rescued from the logging industry.

This was out in Chiang Mai in Thailand, working with an organisation called Elephant Nature Park, who do absolutely amazing work rescuing elephants. They also rescue a range of species including cats and dogs, so it's a fantastic place to volunteer. And you can go for, for sort of a number of weeks, and stay on site and and work with these, these absolutely amazing animals.

So Tycoon's particular story, obviously very sad, as you can see in sort of the photo at the bottom there, she sustained some really serious injuries to her foot, and that meant that she required sort of daily wound management, something that nurses are excellently placed to to do and to help with. She also required sort of pain relief and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories that were given in her food. Again, something that as nurses we were able to sort of work out, and administer those medications.

Unfortunately, you know, you may ask, did she have a good quality of life? Was it sort of the best outcome for her, or was, you know, amputation or euthanasia been a more, more appropriate option? And as we sort of talked about earlier, in terms of sort of religious differences and sort of ethical beliefs, this was an area and a charity that, unfortunately there wasn't an option of euthanasia.

So the best approach was to keep her out of pain and to manage this wound daily. So you can see in the photos there it's daily flushing. Dressing the wound and applying sort of topical treatments which, like I said, we're absolutely perfectly placed as RVNs to carry out.

And then you can see that her sort of walking along with her, with her dressing on and walking back to sort of return to the herd, and she was able to exhibit, you know, normal behaviours, normal herd behaviours for an elephant living out her days at the elephant Nature Park. So next up, relocating some sub-adult Cape Giraffe, and then this was out in the Eastern Cape in South Africa, and this was working with Akalla Veterinary Services, and this is the veterinary services that also run the Vets Go Wild courses. They also run their own internship, which was absolutely is absolutely fantastic.

I can speak firsthand. From, from experiencing that. Now this is a species that are vulnerable.

I think it's often forgotten that giraffe, they are, they are vulnerable, they are, you know, becoming, becoming endangered, so it's really important to conserve this species and one way in which in South Africa they are conserved. Them is using breeding programmes. So these were two sub-adult male giraffes that were on quite a small reserve, in South Africa, and they were being translocated to another larger reserve where they had lots of females, and needed some, some young males.

So helping with the breeding programme, and also with translocation. So from a nursing point of view, we work with the biologists to sort of track, track the giraffe, and then darting the giraffe. And I put the sort of drugs that we that we use to, to dart the giraffe there.

So drugs M99, azapparone and M5050, all drugs, which if you do get a chance to work in sort of African conservation or African wildlife will become very familiar to you. So we're also involved in the capture. Now, if you have ever seen giraffe capture or you've seen videos online, it can be, it's obviously quite dangerous, but it can also be quite comical to, to watch.

With a giraffe, they are darted, and as soon as they're darted, the aim is to get to them, as soon as you possibly can, in order to reverse them. So due to their extremely long neck, they need to be reversed almost, almost immediately, otherwise, unfortunately, the drugs can cause, a sort of severe drop in blood pressure, and, and you could really get into, into deep water really quickly, so they, they must be reversed as soon as possible. And that's definitely a job for, for the nursing team.

Get to the giraffe really, really quickly, administering that reversal into the jugular vein as quickly as possible, and then monitoring the giraffe, whilst we are sort of administering any drugs that need to be given, blindfolding, and popping on a head collar. And then often giraffes are then allowed to get up and they're actually walked onto a trailer like you would, sort of a domesticated horse. These two boys, the darting went really well, they got up really, really quickly and they were sort of transferred onto the.

And transferred to their new reserve, and released. So, really happy ending for these two, but you can just see how, how important the nurse's role is, in translocating these these species and helping to, aid in their conservation. Next we've got a Chinese pangolin tail amputation.

So, this particular individual was one of the pangolins that we actually rescued, one of the two injured pangolins that were rescued when we were out working with Save Vietnam's wildlife in Vietnam. Now pangolins. Do have a very, very sad story.

Unfortunately they are critically endangered. They're really a species on the brink. I think unfortunately, mainly because most people don't actually know what pangolins are, and they don't get this sort of, the sort of press and highlighting that they, they deserve.

There are species that are being persecuted, sort of in their thousands, for use of their scales in Chinese medicine. So charities like Save Vietnam's Wildlife are doing amazing work to help conserve the species, and this particular individual, yes, was very lucky that she survived. Unfortunately, like the majority of the pangolins that, do survive the ordeal of, of being, captured and then.

Sort of trafficked across borders, they are sort of subject to being in quite small spaces, cramped spaces, overcrowded, and they often do suffer from injuries, whether that's their limbs or their tails. This particular individual suffered a really, really nasty tailbed infection, and we did have to amputate the tail. So I've got some photos there of of one of the lovely vet's way, doing a tail amputation on this individual, so.

I've got some photos of myself there monitoring the general anaesthetic. Obviously, again, something that we do absolutely every day with our, with our companion species, administering intravenous fluid therapy, taking blood samples, and then once we finish the operation, working out a good wound management programme. So obviously these species are wild species, it's very difficult to do sort of dressing changes and bandage changes without them being stated.

And also again, they're a wild animal, you know, with our domestic species we can keep a buster collar on them, or we can put a pet shirt on, or we can, you know, nicely bandage up a wound, and know that there's going to be an owner that can help to keep that wound nice and clean and dry. With a wild species, it's quite difficult, so. Coming up and being inventive and thinking outside the box, so similar to what we do with our cats and our dogs, if they do have wounds that we need to sort of keep covering, we often use empty fluid bags, and that's exactly what we did with this with the pangolin.

We used an empty fluid bottle, bandaged up the tail, and then popped taped one of those empty fluid bottles in. So you can just see that's a perfect example of those transferable skills, things that we do absolutely every day in practise that we can then use on a, on a highly endangered exotic species. Next up we have nursing a sick pregnant white rhino.

So going back to the Eastern Cape in South Africa with Akalla Veterinary Services again, similarly to the pangolins, rhinos are often persecuted for their horns, sadly, which is no more than keratin, which is the same as our fingernails, but that is used in the, in Chinese medicine. And it's quite a lucrative ordeal. There are quite a lot of syndicates that will send people over to South Africa and other parts of Africa to, to poach rhinos.

So obviously conserving the ones that we can and creating really successful breeding programmes. So important to help conserve the species. And as nurses, we can play a huge role in that.

So this particular individual was an adult female white rhino, that before we actually, sedated her, darted her, we didn't know she was pregnant. She had a 48 hour history of sort of inappetence and, lethargy and sort of ataxia was really wobbly and weak. She was being monitored by reserve staff and.

They noticed that she was sort of being bullied by the by other members of the crash. So we, tracked her, and darted her with the help of the biologists, . And then as nurses, it was our role to monitor the sort of partial sedation, administer intravenous fluid therapy.

So you can see in the photo in the top there with the rhino in the trailer, we've got intravenous catheters in both her ears, both her front legs and both her back legs trying to get as much fluid in as possible. You'll also note the photo at the top there where it looks like I'm sat on the rhino's back. Unfortunately she did manage to pull some of those catheters out, as we were in transit, so it was my job to try and replace these catheters.

So yes, it's definitely, definitely thinking outside the box with this one, but yes, we were able to scan her and find out that she was pregnant. And actually, monitor her, blood gases and her biochemical values, so we took some blood samples in the field, and used a blood gas machine, just to monitor her anaesthetic. She was then translocated to another area where there was a bit more food, and she was at less risk from being bullied.

You know, she was reversed and she made a really, really good recovery, and she's, she's had her baby. And it just goes to show sort of again those transferable skills that we can use from practise, you know, the placing the fluids, taking blood samples, running blood samples and sort of monitoring blood gases, even in sort of remote areas, as this. Next up we've got floater syndrome in a green sea turtle.

So moving over to Australia, and this was working in Cannes turtle rehabilitation centre on Fitzroy Island just off the Great Barrier Reef. This particular species, again, a really endangered species, and this was an adult female green sea turtle that had been rescued due to floater syndrome. And you can see a really nice example in the X-ray there, floaters is often caused by ingested plastic, which often results in a sort of GI blockage and causes this buildup of gas, which, yeah, you can see really nicely in that X-ray.

Unfortunately this actually prevents turtles from being able to dive, so they're unable to feed and it often makes them really, really vulnerable to predation. Particularly to sharks, which are a species that sort of hunt, animals that are above them, that you hunt from below, so. Obviously if poor Portia was there sort of floating out in the open and was unable to dive, she wouldn't be able to get away from from a shark attack.

So she was brought into the rehabilitation centre and it was our job to feed her daily, to monitor her diving progress, and sort of wait for her to pass this plastic in a sort of contained environment. So, from this point of view, it was, you know, weighing of the patient, working out, sort of daily food requirements, which obviously is something that we do in practise all the time. And I've got a video here as well just to show you sort of an example of, of us feeding her and you can see that unfortunately her shell there doesn't go sort of below that waterline.

So here we, yeah, we, we're feeding her squid, and trying to sort of keep her body condition really good. And like I said, daily weighing, and working out food requirements so that we can make her nice and fit and strong, and she has actually now been released into the back into the ocean and is doing doing really well. So again, just goes to show the impact that we can have as nurses.

Next, then we have fitting a lioness with a contraceptive implant. So, again going back to South Africa and working with the Carla Veterinary Services and sort of as we talked about earlier, working with breeding programmes, and using drugs that we're used to, in practise, you know, superorin implants we use for dogs, dogs in practise, so exactly the same principle, just a few more of. The implants due to the sort of bigger size of the lioness, and this particular individual was on a really small, quite a small reserve, and quite a small pride in the Eastern Cape.

And in order to just sort of control numbers and sort of control the population, it was decided that this particular individual was going to be fitted with a contraceptive implant to stop her from getting pregnant. So this involved, tracking the lioness, darting her, once she was, darted and sedated, it involved monitoring her anaesthetic, monitoring her sedation, obviously prepping the area for inserting the contraceptive implant. We also took some blood samples, and obviously monitored her recovery really closely, so.

Again, very similar drugs that we would use for our sort of cat companion counterparts and yeah, monitoring and and anaesthetic exactly how we would in practise, inserting implants exactly the same as we would would in practise as well. And then finally, my last sort of case study for this evening is handing an Asian short clawed otter, and this was back in Vietnam with Save Vietnam's wildlife, again, a really, really vulnerable vulnerable species that is sort of persecuted for the illegal pet trade. In Southeast Asia, a lot of the time these guys are taken from.

Their mothers in the wild, and they're sold as pets and sort of kept in, in homes. Unfortunately, these guys get to a stage like a lot of juvenile dogs where they get into that almost sort of T. Rex stage where they're very bitey and they can be quite aggressive and sort of difficult to handle.

And at this point, a lot of the time they're either sort of abandoned or in the case of this individual luckily rescued and rehabilitated, so you can see us just giving him some milk there and it was our job at the . Save Vietnam's wildlife at the rehab centre to hand rear him, so feeding and toileting him like we would with sort of puppies and kittens. And then once he was old enough, we were able to wean him and then introduced him to a group of juveniles, and then he went on to be released.

So, very, very similar tactics to how he. We would hand rear our domestic counterparts, so our cats and our dogs, and just showing how you can make a huge impact, for these sort of, endangered species, just by using the, you know, transferable skills that you have from day to day practise. So I suppose the take home messages from this evening, working with wildlife can definitely just begin on your doorstep.

You know, volunteer with your local wildlife charity, volunteer with your local zoo, you know, you can have a huge impact helping wildlife charities in your local area, and it can help with your handling, you know, go and get involved, handle a range of different species. British wildlife is an absolutely fantastic place to start. And you know, working abroad with wildlife has never been easier.

You know, you can contact people online, international flights are so easy to get hold of, especially now we've got the pandemics out of the way, and they're really readily available, so there's not really a reason not to sort of explore the veterinary world around you. And I really hope that this presentation will hopefully have inspired some of you to take your career overseas and, you know, really have the sort of adventure of a lifetime. I hope it really highlights all the skills that you already have that you can put into practise with these exotic species, and I think it's a really amazing way of sort of reigniting your passion for veterinary nursing, and it just definitely highlights how sort of vital RVNs are ensuring animal welfare, sort of across the world, and helping to conserve some of these really endangered and sort of highly persecuted species.

So thank you so much for listening. If you do have any questions, I put my email address on there and feel free to email me any questions about anything that you've seen this evening, and I really hope you enjoyed the presentation. I just also like to say a big thank you to the webinar vet for asking me to do another webinar.

It's been a, been a real pleasure, so thank you very much.