Chicago Tribune (July 12) It was in 2015 — when all the equipment he had fit in a tackle box and the only help he had was a part-time vet student — that [Matt] Allender, [a clinical associate professor in the Department of Veterinary Clinical Medicine at the University of Illinois and] now the director of conservation biology at Brookfield Zoo, began heading out to Lake County every year to tend to turtles in the wild. They would do some blood work and test for a few diseases.
In the years since, as science has uncovered more threats, viruses and bacteria affecting turtles, these field visits have become longer and more complex.
This June, Allender was joined by more than 20 people, mostly veterinarians, in a yearly “Blanding’s Bowl” — a friendly competition that splits scientists from multiple institutions, including the Cook and Lake County forest preserves, into several teams to tend to native species such as the painted turtle, the common snapping turtle and the event namesake, the state-endangered Blanding’s turtle, of which fewer than 500 are left in Illinois.
Scientists Team Up to Protect Endangered Turtles from Increasing Threats
