We are pleased to announce the appointment of Annika Posautz as EAZWV Operational Lead effective from 1st July.

Many of you will know Annika already as she has served on the EAZWV Board as EAZWV honorary secretary, she is current lead of the EAZWV Education Working Group and has also been working alongside Steph and Rafaela to deliver the 2025 Zoo and Wildlife Health Conference after the tragic loss of Hugo in January.

Annika graduated as a veterinarian from the University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna. She worked as a researcher, lecturer and zoo and wildlife pathologist for many years, before moving on to education management. She also works as a freelance educator for One Health, veterinary education and professional identity. 

Annika brings a wealth of both technical and organisational experience to EAZWV and will be a wonderful addition to our new team.

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Allan Muir as the new Executive Director of EAZWV, effective from July 2025. 

Many of you will know Allan from his previous roles working in EU veterinary policy for EAZA and most recently as Head of Veterinary Services at Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust based at Jersey Zoo.

Allan brings extensive experience in networking and policy development, and a strong commitment to advancing our mission. We look forward to his leadership and vision as we continue to grow and serve our members.

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) in European Wild Mammals: a silent threat ? During our recent pre-Christmas EAZWV webinar, our colleague Carlos Sacristan highlighted the evolving threat posed by the current HPAI H5N1 strain, which is no longer confined to avian species and now poses significant risks to mammalian populations. The recent list published by EFSA reveals now more than 60 mammals species with at least one viral detection of the H5N1 (or H5Nx) clade 2.3.4.4b strain. The geographic and species range of infections is expanding rapidly, with ongoing outbreaks increasingly reported in marine mammals, terrestrial carnivores, and now, ungulates;  infection and concerns surrounding domestic cattle milk have made headlines, and now recent evidence points to risks in equine species : in the forthcoming issue of the CDC journal Emerging Infectious Disease of January 2025, a new paper is demonstrating how Mongolian  horses show evidence of H5N1 seroconversion, while they’re also routinely harboring H3N8 equine influenza virus…

Zoos are not spared, with several cases already reported notably among carnivores in Southeast Asia (big cats) and Europe, including species such as bush dogs and American black bear. Consequently, HPAI should be now considered a key differential diagnosis for acute fatalities and cases exhibiting neurological or respiratory symptoms in exotic mammals. It is also imperative to incorporate HPAI into the Disease Surveillance Plan for zoo mammals. To mitigate associated risks, efforts must be made to reduce interactions between zoo mammals and local waterfowl, particularly in relation to heavily frequented ponds, as well as wanted / unwanted predation.

Additionally, implementing serological monitoring in high-risk enclosures may enable early detection of viral co-circulation or subclinical infections, or at least confirm their absence. Do not hesitate to question the Infectious Disease Working Group about those subjects.

https://www.eazwv.org/page/student_grant_calls

We received the following response:

Dear Sir or Madam, dear supporters of our open letter to the EU Commission on the ban on certain light sources,

We have received a response to our letter from the EU Commission, which takes up our request for an exemption for lighting equipment (special purpose products - animal keeping and husbandry). The exemption we requested was not mentioned or promised by the EU Commission; instead, we were informed that there are existing exemptions for certain product classes and groups, which can also be applied for in the future. For our part, it should first be checked whether the light sources used so far do not fall into one of the possible categories for an exemption. If this is the case, the relevant stakeholders can apply for a further exemption, which may even be permanent and not just temporary.

If there are still products that do not fit into any of the categories, we are open to a further technical exchange with the responsible unit of the EU Commission - stating and listing the relevant technical details. According to our initial assessment, this approach may have to be taken for basking spots. As the further procedure now depends on technical product details (e.g., socket, power or the amount of mercury used in the lamp), we will soon organize a technical exchange with various manufacturers of lamps in order to find out for which products an exemption may be possible and where we need to take other action in the interests of animal welfare and ex situ species conservation.

The European Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians (EAZWV) is committed to helping vets help wildlife. The association represents over 600 vets, vet students and researchers working in wildlife health, free ranging and captive, across 55 countries.

EAZWV expresses profound concern, sympathy and support towards our colleagues, their families and the animals and institutions they are responsible for in Ukraine. 

We urge that the ongoing war cease immediately and hope that the humanitarian crisis can be resolved quickly, allowing everyone to return to peace. Specifically, we wish that those caring for zoo and wild animals can again work in safety.

Meanwhile, we wholeheartedly express our respect for Ukrainian wildlife and zoo professionals’ brave efforts and hard work and urge our members to offer their help via donations.

Direct assistance to Ukrainian zoos is being made possible through the initiative of our strategic partner, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria (EAZA), who has created a fund available via this link. Your support of this fund makes our joint coordinated efforts more effective.

We also support the work of our colleagues at the federation of Veterinarians of Europe (FVE), Federation of European Companion Animal Veterinary Association (FECAVA) and the World Veterinary Association (WVA) for creating the “Vets for Ukraine” hub to coordinate aid by European Veterinarians to help Ukrainian veterinarians, their families and animals. https://vetsforukraine.com

Moreover, the EAZWV Board is attentive to individual requests for help and will continuously explore ways and means to provide technical assistance and other professional support.

10th March 2022

COVID-19 AND THE END OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

WALZER C

Wildlife Conservation Society, 2300 Southern Blvd., Bronx, NY 10460, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; cwalzer@wcs.org

University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna, Savoyenstrasse 1, 1160 Vienna, AUSTRIA

Two decades ago, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer popularized the term “Anthropocene”. In this new era, human influence dominates all non-human processes leading to proclamations that “Nature no longer runs the Earth. We do.”. It is undeniable that profound economic and accompanying socio-political changes drive climate change, biodiversity loss, and species extinction crises, as we exponentially exceed planetary capacity. Today, the Anthropocene is rocked by a virus that has relentlessly spread from its natural environment bringing immense suffering and death to the furthest reaches of our planet. The SARS-CoV-2 virus has successfully recombined from its evolutionary bat origin and acquired the traits necessary to swiftly disseminate among the nearly eight billion immunologically naïve humans. Within a few weeks, the pandemic laid bare the fragility of our accumulation-based capitalist socio-economic concepts. Health impacts and death viscerally drive home the implications of global change and ecocide on a very personal level. Similarly, employment, educational, and opportunity losses have unmasked and exacerbated wide-spread inequalities and injustices. As the world releases trillions of US$ for economic rescue and secures ‘building back better’ recovery packages, the zoo and wildlife veterinary community must actively promote the essential links between the health of humans, wildlife, animals, plants, and the environment. We are tasked with defending science and facts in the face of a staggering deluge of falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and science-negating policies. Our community plays a central role in supporting decision-makers and organizations in understanding that intact and functional ecosystems provide the core infrastructure of life, health, and well-being on our planet. The time has come to step beyond the walls of our respective institutions and grasp the myriad opportunities offered by a coronavirus. As witnessed clearly during these past months, we humans are no longer running the show. It is time to focus resources on the world stage and boldly engage in driving the essential paradigm shift necessary to ensure the biological integrity of the planet for current and future generations.

 Click here to see the Recording

EAZWV September '16 News!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

We are back at work from the first joint AAZV-IZW-EAZWV in Atlanta. Thanks to all of you who made the effort to travel to hot and humid Georgia. I think it was a great experience and I was pleased that over 100 EAZWV members joined us and attended the first EAZWV General Assembly in the US. Important items were decided: we have your vote to apply for non-for profit status and online voting is now ratified. You also voted in new board members: I would like to welcome our new vice president, Hugo Fernandez Bellon, Barcelona Zoo and our new secretary Baptiste Mulot from Zoo de Beauval.

We are already in preparation for the next two conferences. From 24^th-28^th May 2017 The Zoo and Wildlife Health Conference will take place in the home town of the IZW, Berlin – and so it promises to be a great conference! Also the 2^nd joint AAZV-IZW-EAZWV is scheduled for 7 days in October 2018. A delegation has already visited Prague zoo to inspect different conference sites.

During the EAZA conference in Belfast the veterinary committee was very active and promoted the engagement of veterinary advisor for all TAGS and EEPs. In addition, the new MOU between EAZA and EAZWV was officially signed by the EAZA president Thomas Kauffels and EAZWV president Hanspeter W. Steinmetz. We look forward to working together for the welfare and conservation of wildlife and the future of zoos.

These are great step forwards in the development of our organisation. There is a lot of interesting work ahead of us and to reach our goals we are dependent on an active membership. Therefore, if you are interested to help us to advance our profession and our goal of helping vets help wildlife, please contact one of the board members. I am sure we will have a fun and interesting active place in the EAZWV for you.

Looking forward hearing from you,

Hanspeter W. Steinmetz,

President EAZWV

P.S. To get the most out of this Newsletter do remember to LOGIN to the EAZWV website: www.eazwv.org. Once you have done this, the links in the text will take you straight to the documents, articles and features we have been working on!

Running our organisation: Keeping our organisation Purring!

Partnership with EAZA 

EAZWV has just renewed its partnership with the European Association of Zoos and Aquariums (EAZA) for a further 5yrs. We will be working together to improve the health, welfare and sustainability of wildlife. Highlights of this cooperation include: raising awareness and sharing of technical resources on veterinary and species management guidelines and relevant legislation, joint lobbying activities in Brussels, running joint training programmes and EAZA sponsorship of the Infectious Disease Handbook and the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine.

General Assembly Minutes and Annual Report 

Click here to read our General Assembly minutes and here to view EAZWV's Annual Report Presentation.

Changes to the Board - and the Student Section…

Thank you for all of you for submitted your votes both in person at Atlanta and online. We are proud to announce the Board election results: President: Hanspeter Steinmetz, Vice-President Hugo Fernandez Bellon and Secretary: Baptiste Mulot all of which start in office with immediate effect. Sabine Oefner and Kim Gruetzmacher will continue as Treasurer and Vice-Treasurer respectively. Find out more about the board here. 

New Member Applications:

We were pleased to accept all 46 new member applications Jan-July 16 at our General Assembly. Since then we have had a further 27 applications – click here to see who your new colleagues are. As part of our constitution new members have provisional status until they are approved at the GA or 3mth post application to give time for any objections to be lodged.

Member Benefits – Helping you to help Wildlife!

Twice Weekly News Posts - Articles, Events, Job Postings and more!

EAZWV now produces a news feed of interesting articles, papers, job postings, events etc. at least twice weekly (often daily). These are available here. You don’t need to be a Facebook member to view them – but if you do want to have them delivered straight to your Facebook account, just “like” our EAZWV Facebook page!

E-Learning Registration Invitation

EAZWV is proud to offer its members a new online education service in conjunction with the World Veterinary Association and the World Continuing Education Alliance to offer over 900 continuing education courses. Click here to find out more! You will shortly be receiving an invitation from WCEA to register for our e-learning module (if you have already done so you don’t need to re-register!).

Elephant TB Guidelines

EAZWV was invited to the Elephant TB stakeholders meeting in Atlanta, held immediately following our joint conference. The aim of the meeting was to review and update the 2015 Elephant TB Guidelines this summary of the meeting.

Want to find a colleague?

With our new fully searchable online member directory its easy. You can search by name, institution, country or nationality. Next year, we also hope to allow you to search the directory by specialism. Click here to find out more.

EAZWV Continuing Education: Conferences and Summer Schools

Report: 1^st Joint conference EAZWV/IZW/AAZV Atlanta 2016

We had a fabulous Joint Conference in Atlanta this year and will be giving those of you who could not join us access to the proceedings on line shortly. 10 of our student members received an EAZWV bursary to enable them to present their work. Read their account of the conference here. 

Save the Date: The Zoo & Wildlife Health Conference 2017

Our next conference with our partners from IZW will be held in Berlin from 24th - 27th May 2016 with our local hosts being the Berlin Zoo and the Tierpark. More details can be found here. Put the date in your calendar now! (Note also the new name - no one could remember the old one - can you? We hope this will simplify matters!) 

Save the Date 2^nd Joint conference EAZWV/IZW/AAZV Prague 2018

Our first joint conference with our AAZV friends was such a success that we are now busy planning the next one, this time in Prague from 6^th-13^th October 2018 (TBC). Put these provisions dates in your calendar now!

Report: EAZWV Student Summer School

20 of our Student members had a wonderful time in Paris this summer at this year’s EAZWV Student Summer School. Find out what they got up to here. A big thank you to all the course tutors and organisers.

Would you and your institution be interested in hosting the next Student and/or Full Member Summer School? If so, do get in contact with Steph: s.sanderson@eazwv.org

Now looking for student placements

There is a big demand for student training opportunities. The 20 places at this year’s EAZWV Student Summer School was sold out within a week! We are now looking to update our Student Placements list. Can you host a student at your institution? Do you offer externships or internships? If so, please click here.

What have YOU been up to? Articles from our Members

2016 Rudolf Ippen Young Scientist Award Winner:

This year Kim Gruetzmacher was our winner. Click here to read an article she has written about this.

Are you a contender for the 2017 award? or do you have a colleague who you feel should apply? Find out more about the Ippen Award application process and selection criteria here.

Tell us about the work you are doing!

We know our members are involved in a wider variety of exciting projects. We would love to hear about them. Can you send us an article (about 500 words with a couple of pictures is ideal) about your work we can share both in the newsletter and on our Facebook page? If so, please email s.sanderson@eazwv.org

What would you like from EAZWV?

Join the conversation!

EAZWV is here to help you help wildlife.Let us know how we are doing, how we can do better and volunteer to take part. Click here to join the conversation - we would LOVE to hear from you!

This email was sent to '@@email@@' from European Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians. If you wish to stop receiving email from us, you can simply remove yourself by visiting: @@unsubscribe_url@@ 

EAZWV posts interesting news articles, papers, events and job posting at least twice weekly on our Facebook Page. There is NO NEED TO BE A FACEBOOK MEMBER to view these - just click here.

If you do use Facebook and you want to receive feeds direct to your phone/tablet - just "like" us.

Leave any comments here as to the sort of posts you would like to see more of.

EAZWV June 2016 News!

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

A month from now will see us in Atlanta for the first joint AAZV/IZW/EAZWV conference. Many volunteers from AAZV, IZW and EAZWV have worked hard to put an exciting program together. A big thank you to all of you!

Sadly, not all of you will be coming and so this quarter we have been working extra hard to develop new ways for us all to share information with each other online. Here you can see the new format of the EAZWV newsletter. It contains many links to our new website and also announces the launch of our new Facebook page. Please go visit these and share comments, ideas and information.

There is also a link to our new online voting platform that will allow you to contribute to our General Assembly even if you can’t attend in person. It is essential that we are an active membership. Only by pulling together will we be recognized as a strong and important conservation organization that can effectively represent zoo and wildlife vets and can achieve our shared goal of improving the health, welfare and conservation of wildlife.

I look forward to hearing from you whether in person in Atlanta or on Facebook and the new discussion forums.

Take care,

Hanspeter W. Steinmetz, Vice-President EAZWV

P.S. To get the most out of this Newsletter do remember to LOGIN to the EAZWV website: www.eazwv.org. Once you have done this, the links in the text will take you straight to the documents, articles and features we have been working on!

Running our organisation: Keeping our organisation Purring!

General Assembly 

This year will be held at 19:30 on 20^th July 2016 in Atlanta. We hope to see you there! Please check out the agenda here.

Have your say! 

If you cant come to the General Assembly you can still take part in voting: Click here to vote on new officer positions, constitutional changes and much more. Voting is open to all Full, Student, Retired and Honorary members that have been part of our association for TWO YEARS or more. (NOTE if you are planning on voting in person in Atlanta please do not vote online!) Please contact membership@eazwv.org if you have any questions on voting.

Looking to the future…

In April 14 members of EAZWV’s board and Advisory board got together to explore how we can best achieve our mission: to advance the health, welfare and conservation of wild animals. Read all about it and let us know your thoughts on our online forum.

Board minutes and Reports:

Click here to read our April Board meeting minutes and keep on top of what we are up to.

Member Benefits – Helping you to help Wildlife!

Join us on Facebook

One of the main reasons stated for joining EAZWV was to connect and share information with colleagues. Join our online facebook community and receive news, articles and announcements direct to your phone, tablet or PC.

New Member Only Area on Website 

Our new website now has a member only areawhich we plan to pack with useful resources and member only benefits. Give us feedback on what you would most like to see here and we will get onto it!

Get Easy Access to the Journal

Are you tired of having to remember yet another username and password to get access to the JZWM? Now subscribers can access the online journal by choosing JZWM login from the Member resources menu.

New E-Learning Modules!

EAZWV is proud to offer its members a new online education service in conjunction with the World Veterinary Association and the World Continuing Education Alliance to offer over 900 continuing education courses. Click here to find out more! Thanks to Maya Kummrow for making this possible.

Elephant Herpes Virus Management Guidelines

EAZWV is here to make sure you get the information you need to look after the animals under your care. This is the first of a series of articles from EAZA veterinary advisors to help you do that!

Grant funding for Wildlife projects:

Are you a veterinarian embarking on a career with wildlife? Do you have a great project but no funding? Check out the ZEBRA Foundation – a charity supported by EAZWV to help you! - Next review panel is currently set for 23rd September so make sure you submit by end of August to increase your chances.

Want to find a colleague?

With our new fully searchable online member directory its easy. You can search by name, institution, country or nationality. Click here to find out more.

EAZWV Continuing Education: Conferences and Summer Schools

1^st Joint conference EAZWV/IZW/AAZV Atlanta

This is shaping up to be a fabulous conference. It’s not too late to register. Early bird rates close 1^st July so do it now!

2^nd EAZWV Full Member Summer School 2016

We had a wonderful Full Member Summer School in Nurnberg this year – packed with hands on training and opportunities to make new friends and learn from colleagues. Find out more from participants and have your say: what would you like to see at next year’s summer school? Would you like to be a host?

EAZWV Student Summer School – a sell out! – Now looking for student placements

There is a big demand for student training opportunities. The 20 places at this year’s EAZWV Student Summer School that will be hosted by Paris Zoo and the Ménagerie in August have sold out within a week! We are now looking to update our Student Placements list. Can you host a student at your institution? Do you offer externships or internships? If so please click here.

What else have we been up to?

Section and working group reports

EAZWV working group reports for 2015 including plans for 2016 can be found here. Reports from our key partners are also included in this document. Have your say: let us know what activities you would like to see by joining the online discussion forum.

EAZWV’s regional and student section reports can be found here.

New Member applications:

We have had 44 applications already this year – click here to see who your new colleagues are. As part of our constitution new members have provisional status until they are approved at the GA or 3mth post application to give time for any objections to be lodged.

What have YOU been up to? Articles from our Members

New ECZM residency in Germany:

Read about day to day life as an ECZM resident. Are you feeling inspired? Check out the residency page on the website – new residencies coming online all the time.

Setting up and Running a Wildlife Hospital and Rehabilitation Centre in Norway:

This is an inspirational account of how Aviv Livnat is making a difference to wildlife health and welfare.

What would you like from EAZWV?

Join the conversation!

EAZWV is here to help you help wildlife.Let us know how we are doing, how we can do better and volunteer to take part. Click here to join the conversation - we would LOVE to hear from you!

About This Email: This email was sent to '@@email@@' from European Association of Zoo and Wildlife Veterinarians. If you wish to stop receiving email from us, you can simply remove yourself by visiting: @@unsubscribe_url@@