#27 How it all began: Carlton Herman and the birth of the WDA (USA)

In this first Wildlife Health Talks episode of 2024, we are taking you back to the very beginning, back to the year of 1951, when 28 US and Canadian wildlife biologists at the 16th North American Wildlife Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, founded the Wildlife Disease Committee.

Only one year later, in 1952 the Committee was renamed to, you might have guessed it, the Wildlife Disease Association. The WDA was born. 

And one of the WDA’s founding fathers and first elected president was the wildlife biologist, Dr Carlton Herman. 

For the first time on this podcast, our host Dr Cat Vendl has a whole bunch of guests to chat with about Carlton Herman and what drove him back in the days to found the WDA, a pretty visionary organization back then. After all, in the 1950s One Health was less than in its infancy. 

Cat chats with three of Carlton’s sons, two of his colleagues, Ed Addison and Tom Yuill, and the WDA’s very own Executive Manager, Peri Wolff.