The Ornithological Council nominated two ornithologists for a new standing committee on animal welfare. The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research issued a call to nominate experts for a new Standing Committee for the Care and Use of Animals in Research earlier this fall. The new committee will help foster the exchange of ideas and knowledge on how best to make any future updates to the Guide for the Care and Use of Animals in Research, a prominent guidance document for animal welfare. The OC nominated Dr. William Bowerman and Dr. Rafael Rueda-Hernández for the new committee.
Dr. William Bowerman is a Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Toxicology and the Chair of the Department of Environmental Science and Toxicology at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is a world-renowned expert on studying environmental change through its impact on eagle populations, and a highly-regarded researcher, teacher, and leader in the scientific community.
Dr. Rafael Rueda-Hernández is a Postdoctoral Scholar of the Department of Evolutionary Biology at the Universidad Nacional Autònoma de México, Mexico City and a Senior Research Fellow with the University of California, Los Angeles. He has extensive experience in handling and caring of wild birds for research purposes, and is a highly-regarded ornithologist and leader in the scientific community in Mexico and the Neotropics.
The OC also separately contacted the Institute for Laboratory Animal Research, urging them to use this new standing committee as an opportunity to involve a subset of researchers that have been heretofore underrepresented by those involved with developing and publishing ILAR’s Guide to the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals – wildlife professionals. The Guide to the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals is widely applied to research conducted or funded by the federal government and is a suitable standard for biomedical research. However, it has little information relevant to wildlife research beyond general principles. It is crucial that scientists and researchers with experience working in the field are represented on the new committee and are able to offer their expertise and feedback on the committee tasks and deliberations.
Nominations are being accepted through Nov. 6. Learn more here.