Dr. Yadvendradev Jhala, one of India’s foremost wildlife scientists and a returning Kiessling Prize finalist, rejoins Dr. Robin Ganzert to talk about the species that rarely make headlines. He explains why fewer than 120 Great Indian Bustards remain and how his breeding program became their insurance policy. He also covers his 25 years with Asiatic lions, which descend from fewer than 50 animals and are severely inbred, and his research on the world’s most ancient wolf lineages and on the vulture deaths that led India to ban diclofenac. He says his greatest contribution is the roughly 1,600 conservation practitioners he has trained, and he describes the international field course he would build with the Kiessling Prize.

Vultures are Africa’s cleanup crew, and they are vanishing. In this episode of Robin’s Nest, Dr. Robin Ganzert talks with Kerri Wolter, founder and CEO of VulPro, South Africa’s leading vulture conservation organization. Kerri left a career in banking to spend two decades pulling poisoned vultures back from the edge.

Kerri explains why vultures matter to human health as much as wildlife, since they stop the spread of anthrax, botulism and rabies. She shares how VulPro breeds permanently injured birds that can never fly free, then releases their offspring into historical ranges. She also describes the upstream work: modifying deadly powerlines, investigating poisonings, tracking birds and helping drive restrictions on the toxic drug diclofenac.

Kerri was also a finalist for Global Humane Society’s Kiessling Prize. She shares what the recognition means to her and how she would use it to protect the Great Karoo’s “silent sky,” from a new satellite rescue facility to safe feeding sites for vultures.

Madagascar is home to more than 100 lemur species found nowhere else on Earth, and more than 90% of them face extinction. This week on Robin’s Nest, Dr. Robin Ganzert welcomes back Dr. Jonah Ratsimbazafy, Madagascar’s foremost primatologist, President of the Groupe d’Étude et de Recherche sur les Primates de Madagascar (GERP) and a Kiessling Prize finalist for the second time. A year after his first visit, the threats have escalated. Lemurs are being trafficked by the thousand, hunted for bushmeat and exposed to diseases that cross from forests into people. Dr. Ratsimbazafy shares what wildlife crime looks like on the ground, why enforcement alone is not the answer, and how AI-enabled camera traps, genomic research and zoo-based education could change the odds for the species that depend on Madagascar’s forests.