I chose Tufts [Cummings School] because of the I.V.M. program, the TECA fellowship, and the opportunities to work internationally. I’m researching African elephants, taking an I.V.M. course with public health students, presenting my research at Veterinary Research Day, connecting with global health experts, learning about their work overseas.
TECA Fellow Mairéad Ryan, V27, Contributes to Elephant Conservation Efforts in Kenya
Her work at Reteti Elephant Sanctuary will improve patient care and identify healthcare trends in orphaned elephants
Mairéad Ryan, V27 (she/her) credits her aunt for instilling within her a devotion to elephants and their welfare. Her aunt decorated Ryan’s baby nursery with an African elephant theme and gave her an elephant stuffed animal for every one of her birthdays.
Photo: Sammy Njoronge
“She molded me into loving animals; there’s no other way I could turn out,” says Ryan. (photo Mairéad and aunt)
Now in her second year in the D.V.M. and International Veterinary Medicine (I.V.M.) programs at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, Ryan has worked at wildlife rehabilitation facilities around the world, including the Reteti Elephant Sanctuary in Samburu, Kenya, several years ago. Her experience there was so impactful that she hoped to return to contribute to their efforts in rescuing, rehabilitating, and returning the elephants and other local animals to the wild.
Tufts Elephant Conservation Alliance (TECA) made this goal a reality by awarding Ryan the TECA Fellowship for 2024 to conduct research at Reteti Elephant Sanctuary this past summer. Inspired by the Tufts mascot, Jumbo, TECA was established to support elephant conservation efforts worldwide. TECA is a collaboration of faculty members from across Tufts schools, and for the past five years, has sponsored Tufts students in research related to elephant conservation.
Under the mentorship of her advisor, Dr. Felicia Nutter, assistant professor in the Department of Infectious Disease & Global Health at Cummings School and in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts School of Medicine, Ryan designed a research project to aid the veterinary team and positively impact the orphaned elephants of Reteti Elephant Sanctuary. She was awarded the full $5,000 TECA grant to standardize and digitize the clinical records of all the animals that have come through the sanctuary and create a health database to inform care for the animals and to flag trends in the health of the elephants and potential risk factors for disease.
“Reteti Elephant Sanctuary is a ground-breaking facility established by the Samburu community to provide critical care for their wildlife,” says Nutter. “Mairéad’s previous experience there and her interest in elephant conservation made it a natural choice for her summer research. Reteti staff have collected information on all the animals admitted to care, and because their focus is on emergency rescue, rehabilitation, and return of animals to the wild, they haven’t yet analyzed all the data. Mairéad’s work supports analysis of the existing data and easier collection and analysis of more information going forward for the benefit of the wildlife and the community caring for them.”
The first community-owned elephant sanctuary, Reteti, was founded to treat injured and rescued animals in northern Kenya and return them to the wild if possible. The Samburu are pastoralists, so they move throughout the year to find grazing areas for their livestock. In the dry season, they rely on wells dug in riverbeds to bring up water for the livestock. Many baby elephants fall into these wells while their families are trying to access water. Previously, the elephants rescued from the wells were taken to Nairobi and released back into southern parts of Kenya. Reteti Elephant Sanctuary opened eight years ago so that the elephants could be returned to Samburu in northern Kenya, where they were found. Reteti also shelters other rescued animals, including giraffes, oryx, dik-diks, zebras, elands, gerenuks, lesser and greater kudu, and Somali ostriches.
Ryan spent six weeks this past summer at the sanctuary combing through all the clinical records in digital and paper format (recovering some covered in small nests made by mud wasps) to create patient profiles for every animal that has been at the sanctuary since its inception—250 animals in total, including 160 elephants.
Some animals had daily records, and others just intake forms. Many had the same name (in Samburu, the animals are often named based on where they were found). Ryan cross-checked with the keepers and the rescue team to ensure the accuracy of the records. She used Wildlife Rehabilitation MD (WR-MD), a free health records database created by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and Wild Neighbors Database Project.
By the end of the summer, Ryan completed entering the historical records, set practices in place to standardize the data collection going forward, and trained the Reteti veterinary team on the technology. This new database provides the staff with a comprehensive view of each patient’s history and a more efficient way to store and access data. The database tracks animals’ symptoms at intake, where and why they were rescued, their age, and other variables to generate statistics about the population they serve.
Ryan analyzes that data to assess trends in health outcomes, to help inform veterinarians about treating orphaned elephants, and to identify risk factors for disease. For example, the Reteti keepers and rescue team suspects that respiratory and gastrointestinal diseases are the leading causes of illness and death in orphaned elephants. About half of the orphaned elephants are found in wells. Many spend up to three days in the wells and may be exposed to pathogens from aspirating the water. Ryan is currently examining the data she collected to determine if that is the case, and if so, the staff may treat high-risk orphaned elephants found in wells with antibiotics as soon as they arrive.
“As the veterinary team uses the database, they generate more data for future research, and with more consistent data on animals, we are better able to detect significant findings. There is very little research into the health of infant and juvenile African elephants,” Ryan says.
After conducting a GIS (Geographic Information System) analysis of the data to determine the wells that elephants most often fall into, Ryan pulled together a reference sheet of elephant rescue locations. Sharing the results of the analysis with the staff of Reteti Elephant Sanctuary, in addition to Samburu community leaders and country government officials, will direct more resources to those areas.
“I had GPS coordinates for most of the well rescues,” says Ryan. “I was able to identify two wells where multiple babies fell down that should be listed as the highest priority for elephant proofing to prevent more elephants from being orphaned.”
Throughout the summer, Ryan sent weekly journal updates to Dr. Nutter and posted on her blog. In September, she presented her research at Cummings School’s Veterinary Research Day. She’s working on her final report, which she hopes to publish in an academic journal.
“I’m really grateful for the help and support of everyone at Reteti,” says Ryan. “They are always so welcoming and accepting of me in the community. I was the only person there who was not part of the Samburu community. I appreciate them inviting me back and helping me with this research.”
Ryan’s first experience with Reteti Elephant Sanctuary was as an undergraduate six years ago. A New England native, Ryan attended the University of California, Davis, earning a degree in animal science, specializing in captive exotic species. She interned at locations around the world with a wide variety of species, including with the veterinary animal care team at Nairobi Animal Orphanage, helping revamp their tortoise care program, and at Alturas Wildlife Sanctuary in Costa Rica, assisting in establishing a symbolic adoption program of wild animals.
As a veterinary and research intern at Reteti, she helped set up new equipment shipped over from the San Diego Zoo and also conducted preliminary research into a common worm parasite that resulted in supplementing the orphaned elephants’ microbiomes to increase their resistance. During that time, Ryan helped rescue an elephant called Meibae, whose mother died in a human-wildlife conflict event. She rode by motorbike with the rescue team for several hours through the Matthews Mountain Range and the bush to find him. Ryan was intrigued by how the other elephants at Reteti integrated Meibae into the rest of the herd.
“I saw how compassionate other elephants were to him. One elephant grabbed him by the trunk, led him out, and introduced him to all the elephants one by one,” she says.
Those veterinary experiences around the world led Ryan to Cummings School.
“I chose Tufts [Cummings School] because of the I.V.M. program, the TECA fellowship, and the opportunities to work internationally,” she says. “I’m researching African elephants, taking an I.V.M. course with public health students, presenting my research at Veterinary Research Day, connecting with global health experts, learning about their work overseas.”
Meibae was released back into the wild last summer, a few days before Ryan arrived back at Reteti, a milestone moment for both. In July, Ryan assisted in the rescue of a two-day-old reticulated giraffe. She explains that some species hide their babies while searching for food. Often, community members find them and report them as orphans, not realizing that the mother will return. Staff from Reteti stay with these babies for up to three days in hopes of reuniting the baby with its mother. When this baby giraffe’s mother did not return, the vets brought her to the sanctuary. Eleven adult giraffes that were rescued and released from Reteti return to the sanctuary most mornings to browse. Ryan watched as they nurtured the orphaned giraffe on their morning visits to Reteti. “It’s amazing to get to know another species and fall in love with giraffes as well, getting to see their cheeky little personalities and interact with them every day.”
Ryan hopes to continue working to support Reteti Elephant Sanctuary throughout her career and that the data gathered in the database can be used to conduct further research on orphaned reticulated giraffes and Grevy’s zebras. After veterinary school, she’d like to specialize in conservation medicine and theriogenology, supporting species survival plans to increase numbers of species and genetic diversity through assisted reproduction and help bring back species from the brink of extinction.
During her time in Africa, Ryan also visited with her aunt, who now lives in Kenya. They traveled to Amboseli National Park and saw some of the last big tuskers, elephants with tusks over 100 pounds that reached the ground. Only 25 big tuskers remain in the world.
“It’s special to have pride in being Jumbos and have an impact on African elephants as a whole. It was an amazing opportunity to conduct research overseas that will directly benefit our mascot species. Through the fellowship, I can give back to the species and do something good for them.”