Dr. Jen is Saving Thousands of Animals Annually

Dr. Jen is Saving Thousands of Animals Annually

By Annie Bradfield

In the small, rural Clarke County town of Boyce, there’s an animal hospital that doesn’t charge for its services or take appointments. Thousands of animals are brought in each year and every patient receives the best possible care from a world-renowned veterinarian. The only catch—the patients are all wild animals.

Saving an eagle at Blue Ridge Wildlife Center.

Photos courtesy of Dr. Jen Riley

Rescuing an alligator with machete wound.

Dr. Jennifer Riley, who prefers to be called “Dr. Jen,” is the hospital director at Blue Ridge Wildlife Center (BRWC) and, for the first six years of her tenure, its only veterinarian. Her patients have injuries not often seen in a companion animal hospital, including songbirds with eye infections, turtles caught on fishing hooks, foxes with broken legs, and eagles suffering from lead poisoning. Every day brings a new surprise, but for Dr. Jen, who has worked in wildlife medicine around the globe, no challenge is too great.

After graduating from Cornell University in only three years, she went on to receive her Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. Tufts has one of the longest-running wildlife medicine programs in the country.

Upon completing her undergraduate studies early, she made time to study at the Centre for Animal Rehabilitation and Education in South Africa, Matang Wildlife Center in Malaysian Borneo, and at Chimps Inc. in Bend, Oregon where she got first-hand experience treating everything from sun bears to orangutans.

During veterinary school, her passion for wildlife medicine grew to include One Health research, and she found ample opportunities to study how the health of local wildlife and the environment affects human health.

She completed a one-year global health fellowship with the CDC, researching rabies and avian influenza in Guatemala, and assisted wildlife medicine efforts at ARCAS Rescue in Peten, Guatemala and Zoológico San Martín in Baños, Ecuador. She also worked with Animal Welfare Association, Rescue and Education in Guatemala, caring for and obtaining samples from wild and domestic animals to test for zoonotic pathogens that could be harmful to the local community.

Following graduation, Dr. Jen completed an internship at the Belize Wildlife and Referral Clinic. As the only wildlife hospital in the county, all manner of species were brought in for medical care - monkeys, manatees, jaguars, alligators, and even the residents of the Belize Zoo. Dr. Jen also found her love of teaching international veterinary students. To this day, students travel from all across the country to study under Dr. Jen.

Dr. Jen then went on to work at the Clinic for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife (CROW) in Sanibel, Florida one of the nation’s leading wildlife teaching hospitals. She then completed a fellowship in zoological medicine at Lion Country Safari in West Palm Beach. That experience confirmed the right path for her was not in a zoo setting, but working directly with wildlife and returning them to their native habitat.

That same path led her to Clarke County to work at Blue Ridge in 2016. Since then, she’s overseen the treatment of over 10,000 patients, pushed the field of One Health research forward by publishing new information, and ensured the future of the field by training the next generation of veterinarians to engage in research and public health.

Annie Bradfield is the executive director of the Blue Ridge Wildlife Center in Boyce, the only dedicated wildlife hospital in Northern Virginia. The center assists more than 3,000 native wildlife annually. Details:www.blueridgewildlifectr.org.