Wildlife Conservation and Preservation in the 21st Century

Alex Mansfield
Watershed Ecologist, North and South Rivers Watershed Association
South Shore Regional Coordinator, Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program

Alex Mansfield is the Watershed Ecologist for North & South Rivers Watershed Association (NSRWA) and the South Shore Regional Coordinator for the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program. He holds an MS of Environmental, Coastal, and Ocean Sciences from UMass. Prior to joining NSRWA Alex served as a Principal Research Scientist for the non-profit Battelle Memorial Institute, and as the Ecology Program Director for Jones River Watershed Association.  For the past 25 years Alex has been designing and conducting environmental field programs from the tropics to the arctic. This has included blue-water diving in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, tracking the Valdez oil spill in Prince William Sound, sampling around icebergs in the Chukchi Sea, and developing sustainable aquaculture programs following tsunami devastation in Chile.

North & South Rivers Watershed Association website: www.nsrwa.org
Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program website: massbays.org

Jaime Masterson
Fish Biologist, US Fish and Wildlife Service

I am a Fish Biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) at the Central New England Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office (FWCO) in Nashua, NH. I specialize in fish passage, which is the removal or by-pass of barriers to aquatic organism passage such as dams and culverted road crossings. My geographic coverage ranges from New Hampshire down to the Long Island/NYC area. I have been working for the USFWS for 18 years. I started in the fish hatchery system where I worked at multiple National Fish Hatcheries for 6 years, before transitioning over to fish passage at the Lake Champlain FWCO in Essex Junction, VT in 2011 and then to the Central New England FWCO in 2017.  Since 2017, I have helped complete 35 projects opening 208.2 miles and 1,013 acres to fish passage for anadromous species and brook trout, leveraging $815,000 of National Fish Passage Program (NFPP) funding with over $11 M in partner funding. I have helped secured $3.85 M in NFPP Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Funding for 4 projects. Originally from Vermont, I now live in a small Southern NH town with my two daughters, ages 15 and 12.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at the Central New England Fish and Wildlife Conservation Office Website: www.fws.gov/office/central-new-england-fish-and-wildlife-conservation/about-us
Federal Jobs: www.usajobs.gov
Current Fish Passage Project: merrimack.org/talbotmills

Priya Patel, BVM MRCVS
Medical Director and Wildlife Veterinarian 

Priya’s passion for wildlife medicine and rehabilitation first started during an undergraduate internship at New England Wildlife Center (NEWC) in 2007. It was that inspiring summer that put her on the path to pursuing a career in this field. Priya graduated from the Royal Veterinary College of London in 2014 and then completed an internship in wildlife medicine and conservation at Tufts Wildlife Clinic. There she developed a specialized interest in avian medicine and surgery. She is now the wildlife medical director and oversees wildlife cases at both the Weymouth and Barnstable hospitals.

Cape Wildlife Center website: capewildlifecenter.com/about
New England Wildlife Center website: www.newildlife.org

Patty Reilly
President and Founder, North River Wildlife Rehabilitation, Inc.
Vice President Wildlife Rehabilitation Association of MA
Licensed MA Wildlife Rehabilitator

Patty Reilly is a licensed wildlife rehabilitator and the founder/president of North River Wildlife Rehabilitation Inc., a 501c3 non-profit in Marshfield MA. She is also the Vice President of the Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Massachusetts (WRAM).

Before retiring, Patty spent most of her career as a research scientist, first studying immunology at Yale and Harvard Medical Schools and at Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals. While at BI, she established a science program for kids in 4th and 5^th grades, bringing science and real scientists into their classrooms. Patty most recently worked as a research analyst tracking cell and gene therapies for Citeline, a company that tracks clinical trials and drug development globally. She has a BS in Zoology from Connecticut College and an MS in Biology from SCSU.

When Patty is not rehabbing Eastern cottontail rabbit babies, she enjoys walks with her 2 dogs, travel, photography, and bird watching along the North River where she lives.

Chris Whittier, DVM, PhD
Assistant Professor, Director of Conservation Medicine Program (Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University)

Dr. Whittier is a wildlife veterinarian and assistant professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University where he directs the MS in Conservation Medicine program. He earned his undergraduate degrees at Brown, his DVM at Tufts, and PhD at NC State where his research focused on disease transmission between humans and wild gorillas. That lead to serving as the regional field veterinarian for the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project/Gorilla Doctors in central Africa. He has since worked with the Smithsonian Institution, World Wildlife Fund, and on various USAID projects in Africa and Asia. More locally, he leads and guides student projects investigating lead and rodenticide exposure in mammals, snake fungal disease, and the use of camera traps for conservation.