Dr. Justorien Rambeloniaina grew up in northeastern Madagascar watching lemurs captured and killed, not yet knowing they were among the world's most endangered primates. Today he's fighting for them on every front, reconnecting fragmented forests with a five-kilometre wildlife corridor, combating the illegal pet trade, and sharing a quietly powerful encounter with a family keeping two mouse lemurs in a yellow water container, and what happened next.

But his approach goes beyond the animals themselves. By establishing healthcare and education centres in remote villages, his team tackles the deeper drivers of habitat loss, because when communities thrive, lemurs have a fighting chance too. This is One Health conservation at its most grounded: built on community trust, shaped by personal experience, and driven by the conviction that Malagasy people are best placed to protect Madagascar's natural heritage.

Links

Learn more:

The Dr. Abigail Ross Foundation for Applied Conservation (TDARFAC)

The Lemur Freedom Project

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Six women. Five continents. Decades of experience spanning wildlife veterinary practice, disease research, government policy, and international conservation. Recorded for 2026 International Women's Day, this episode brings together an extraordinary panel to celebrate women in wildlife health, their journeys, their achievements, and their honest reflections on working in a field that hasn't always made space for them.

From Taiwan to Kenya, Wyoming to Brazil, Indonesia to Germany, our guests share what drew them to wildlife health and what they've had to navigate along the way, the subtle daily realities of male-dominated spaces, alongside the genuine optimism that comes from seeing more women enter the field and rise into leadership. Warm, funny, and deeply human, this is the kind of conversation that reminds you why community matters in this work.

Watch this episode as a video podcast on our Youtube channel here.

Learn more about our panelists:

• Dr. AiMei Chang, wildlife veterinarian and academic at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology in Taiwan, and Secretary of the WDA Asia-Pacific section
• Dr. Sharon Mulindi, Senior Veterinary Officer at Kenya Wildlife Service and a Masters student of Conservation Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, and Vice Chair of the WDA Africa and Middle East section
• Dr. Aricia Duarte-Benvenuto, veterinarian and postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratory of Wildlife Comparative Pathology at the University of São Paulo in Brazil
• Dr. Kim Gruetzmacher, Wildlife and Conservation Veterinarian, working for the German Federal Agency for Nature Conservation as Head of the Division for International Nature Conservation
• Dr. Samantha Allen, Supervisor of the Veterinary Service unit (Wyoming Game and Fish Department), State Wildlife Veterinarian for Wyoming, and President of the American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians
• Dr. Fransiska Sulistyo, wildlife veterinarian and consultant specialising in orangutan conservation and rehabilitation in Indonesia, and a PhD student at Adelaide University.

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

What if the very fences built to protect livestock have been quietly driving one of Africa's greatest wildlife crises? Professor Steve Osofsky, one of the architects of the One Health movement, has spent over 30 years trying to solve exactly that problem in the vast five-nation Kavango-Zambezi Conservation Area, home to the majority of Africa's elephants.

Steve shares how WOAH’s breakthrough recognition that a biosafe beef value chain can be considered equivalent to fence-based management of foot and mouth disease risk has allowed for a paradigm shift in southern African livestock disease management for the first time in over 70 years. He also points to how reviving the lost art of herding is helping to open new markets for farmers living alongside wildlife, reducing losses to lions, and offering the possibility of restoring wildlife corridors through less reliance on fencing.

This is a story about bio-diplomacy, breaking down institutional silos, and finding win-wins in one of conservation's most stubborn standoffs. After 30 years, Steve is cautiously optimistic, and his reasoning is hard to argue with.

Links

Profile on the Cornell website

Program websites of AHEAD and the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Wildlife Health

Cornell Chronicle news piece: Removing Southern African Fences May Help Wildlife, Boost Economy

Most recent paper on the issue: Using Qualitative Risk Assessment to Re-Evaluate the Veterinary Fence Paradigm within the Kavango Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area

Related paper from 2013: Balancing Livestock Production and Wildlife Conservation in and around Southern Africa's Transfrontier Conservation Areas

The Manhattan Principles on “One World, One Health”: https://www.oneworldonehealth.org/sept2004/owoh_sept04.html

Watch the video version of the podcast interview here.

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