Environment and Health Seminar Series: One Health in Action: Wildlife Conservation and Disease Prevention in a Changing World with Dr. Lucy Keatts
When and Where
Speakers
Description
The School of the Environment invites you to virtually attend this seminar led by Dr. Lucy Keatts, as part of our 2026 Environment and Health Seminar Series.
Register here to attend online.
About the Seminar
Emerging infectious diseases and other One Health threats are increasingly driven by ecological disruption, wildlife trade, and expanding human–animal interfaces. This seminar on One Health in Action: Wildlife Conservation and Disease Prevention in a Changing World, will outline how effective prevention of emerging diseases requires shifting from reactive response to primary prevention rooted in conservation. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Health Program—one of the only global conservation NGOs with a dedicated Health Program and a founding contributor to the 2004 “Manhattan Principles”—advances an operational One Health model integrating wildlife surveillance, research, action and policy across scales.
Protected areas function as essential One Health infrastructure. Through engagement with the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas Task Force on Protected Areas and One Health, WCS advances the role of well-managed protected areas in maintaining ecosystem integrity, buffering high-risk interfaces, enabling systematic wildlife health monitoring, and facilitating cross-sector coordination.
Drawing on field programs in Cambodia, Peru, the Republic of Congo, Alaska, and Latin America, this presentation demonstrates how WCS builds wildlife health surveillance systems from protected-area rangers to national laboratories, deploys SMART-based monitoring and the Health and Wildlife Knowledge (HAWK) data service, and strengthens event-based networks. Case studies include early detection of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1), African swine fever, Nipah virus, and lumpy skin disease in endangered banteng, demonstrating the value of integrated wildlife intelligence for rapid response.
Together with research linking wildlife trade and deforestation to pathogen emergence, this work positions conservation and wildlife surveillance as foundational strategies for One Health approaches to preventing emerging health threats in a rapidly changing world.
About the Speaker
Dr. Lucy Keatts
Dr. Lucy Keatts is the Associate Director for the WCS Health Program. Lucy is a veterinarian with a Master's in Veterinary Science of Conservation Medicine and two decades of experience managing, implementing, and building capacity for wildlife health and disease management, monitoring, surveillance, and research at diverse wildlife-human-domestic animal interfaces around the world. Lucy works to highlight the intrinsic connections among human, animal, and ecosystem health and well-being, and to elevate understanding of the value and co-benefits of primary preventive approaches to reduce the risk of emerging health threats to animals and people, including infectious disease spillover and non-infectious threats. She is passionate about building One Health and wildlife health capacity around the globe, developing locally relevant collaborative wildlife health surveillance and response networks to support conservation and human and animal health, and pursuing socio-ecological systems-based, trans-disciplinary research on conservation and health-related issues at wildlife-human-domestic animal interfaces.