Wildlife Health in the 21st Century: the KVF Jubb Fellowship Public Lecture

A recording of the lecture is avalable on the Faculty of Veterianry and Agricultural Sciences' Soundcloud page.

How many people can the earth support, and with what quality of life? In the 21st century, this question has moved from a matter of passive speculation to an active global experiment in which all of humanity is participating as subject, scientist, judge and jury. The question is fundamentally ecological, and, as the wave of human numbers on earth approaches its peak, it has linked the health and well-being of humanity and of the biosphere as never before.

An unexpected outcome of the new global ecology of the 21st century is the steep rise in importance to human affairs of wild animal health and disease. Infections originating in wild animals now threaten every household: AIDS, Influenza, Ebola, SARS, Hanta, Hendra, Nipah, Zika, Pox, Plague… They threaten livestock and global food security. Simplified ecosystems with ever more impoverished biodiversity, including diverse and health wild animal populations, no longer deliver the ecological services that formerly protected human and animal health.

In the 2015 KVF Jubb Fellowship Public Lecture, Dr Ted Leighton will argue that veterinary medicine has both the capacity and a major obligation to apply its knowledge and problem-solving skills to understanding and managing the wild animal side of the global health equation. He will place wildlife health in the context of the global ecology of the 21st century and its intersections with public health, food security and global ecological imperatives.

Dr Ted Leighton is a professor emeritus in the Department of Veterinary Pathology at the Western College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Saskatchewan and the inaugural KVF Jubb Fellow at the Faculty of veterinary and Agricultual Sciences. He was the founding Executive Director of the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative, and he is a member of the Wildlife Working Group of the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). Dr Leighton's research and publications have included pathology and epidemiology of non-infectious and infectious diseases of wild animals, disease surveillance, disease management, the role of veterinary medicine in human society and interpretation of science to the general public.