Photo by Copper Aitken-Palmer

Preserving the Earth's biodiversity is one of the major challenges of the new millennium.   As life science discipline, veterinary medicine contributes to wildlife conservation by studying disease in native populations, helping to effectively manage zoo collections or by developing safe drugs for animal translocation.  Less well known, but of equal importance is the role of the veterinarian in conducting basic and applied research in an array of related disciplines including reproductive biology, nutrition, ecology, genetics and animal behavior.