By Roger Segelken
Veterinary students get used to being kicked, clawed and stomped by animals they're trying to help. Lisa K. Wingate, D.V.M. '96, took her lumps, too, but nothing prepared her for the heartbreak of having a vital research project with African elephants torn from her grasp.
"I wanted to see what contribution veterinarians can make to field research in wildlife biology," the 28-year-old Winnipeg, Manitoba, native said, recalling the path that took her from the American Southwest and the Costa Rican rain forest to the nature preserves of South Africa. "Veterinarians understand the role of animals' parasites and infectious diseases -- the aspects of health and physiology that have not been fully explored by wildlife biology -- and that's where we can help. We can form cross-disciplinary partnerships in sciences where the tradition has been to work in isolation."
The daughter of two health professionals was on her way to becoming a social psychologist when the animal-medical "bug" bit. There was just one problem.
"I thought I would be 'bad with blood.' The sight of blood flowing turned me three shades of green," she said.
Working as a vet's assistant cured the blood phobia. Then, during the summer vacations from Cornell, Wingate turned to blood -- and to even more distasteful excretions -- as an unexplored window to the health status of wild animals.
She started out small, setting mist nets in Costa Rica's Curu Wildlife Refuge to study the foraging behavior of frugivorous (fruit-eating) birds and fingerprinting DNA to determine the parentage of pronghorn antelope in Utah. Her research subjects increased in scale when she met Katharine B. (Katy) Payne, the Cornell biologist who was studying well-digging behavior of African elephants. Wingate helped analyze already-collected data, trying to learn why elephants excavate for subsurface water even when ample supplies of fresh water stand nearby.
That led to a position at the Conservation and Research Center of Washington's National Zoo, where she performed hormone assays with zoo elephants' blood, urine and fecal samples.
Sifting through mammoth manure "is not very glamorous, but it's non-invasive and it is an emerging discipline," Wingate said of efforts to test an animal's endocrine status from what it leaves behind. For example, cortisol in samples can show whether the elephant is stressed, while progesterone levels in female samples indicate whether she is pregnant.
Collecting blood samples is relatively simple with
captive elephants. Picking up feces and urine is safer with
free-ranging and sometimes dangerous elephants where
the hormone research took her next: to the Kruger National
Park in South Africa. In that park all elephants over a
predetermined herd size of 7,000 are culled and slaughtered
each year -- unless they are lucky enough to be translocated
to
private game preserves. The International Fund for
Animal Welfare (IFAW) hired Wingate in what was to be a
multi-year project, using her hormone-monitoring technique
to test elephants before and after their translocation.
Her South Africa project began in May 1995. At first park officials tried to bar her entrance, but Wingate prevailed and obtained samples from animals that were slated to be culled or translocated. The college agreed to juggle her schedule so that Wingate could return periodically to Africa and conduct the study through subsequent phases. But last August, the translocation was delayed, in part because shipping crates for the elephants were not ready. Wingate trained a South African assistant in sample-collection techniques, tried to "mend fences" with the national park officials and reluctantly came back to Cornell.
At an October IFAW meeting in Rome about the
future of African elephants, the student's project was
enthusiastically endorsed by some of the world's leading
elephant researchers, including Iain Douglas-Hamilton and
Joyce
Poole. Nothing, it seemed, but clear sailing lay
ahead. Samples were being shipped back to Cornell labs, where
physiology Professor David Robertshaw, who also is
internationally noted for his research with African
mammals, provided valuable guidance.
Abruptly, seven months into her research, the project was terminated by the conservation organization. The work had become "too political," Wingate was told. There was no possible appeal.
A week before graduation, Wingate could barely disguise her bitter disappointment. "I made a start on work that very much needs to be done," she said. "The termination was a great disservice to the wildlife biology community, to the supporters of IFAW and to the animals. If I don't end up doing it, I hope someone else can."
Then she brightened. "I intend to continue this work. I suspect, though, that it will have to be in another country."
She also intends to build an interdisciplinary bridge -- between veterinary medicine and wildlife biology -- within herself by earning a Ph.D. in that field. But first she plans a year or two of veterinary practice and has accepted a position in a San Francisco-area clinic. "I need to get a solid handle on my skills," she acknowledged. "As the saying goes, 'If you don't use it, you lose it.'
"Then I'll get back to the project," Wingate vowed. The doctor who worked among elephants noted that her first job "will be in a small-animal practice. But maybe I'll get to see some exotics on the side."