World Veterinary Day: Meet Dr Claire Okell, veterinary alumna and founder of the Pangolin Project
For World Veterinary Day 2024, the ULVAA caught-up with alumna Dr Claire Okell (BVSc 2009), founder of The Pangolin Project. Here, Claire tells us about where her vet degree has taken her, starting from her days at Liverpool, ending with her advice for current veterinary students or alumni with a passion for animal advocacy.
What led you to consider a veterinary career?
I was a fairly typical horsey teenager that loved being practical and outdoors. My favourite subject at school was biology and I was extremely curious about the natural world. Veterinary at the time seemed like a really good fit and guaranteed to ensure a lively and interactive career that was intellectually challenging.
What are your memories of Vet school?
Liverpool was an extremely fun vet school with an incredible variety of people. The friendship group I had there is still one of the most important to me even now. As life evolved over the five years I explored a number of different things and options from the vet school. I started to look beyond clinical practice in my third, fourth and fifth years as I began to realise that, whilst I enjoyed the veterinary course and profession, clinical practice was not for me. Through this I met a number of tutors and a small group of other students with similar interests in using the skills we were learning in other ways. By my fourth year I was increasingly interested in the human: livestock interface in developing countries and how animal health and welfare had a profound impact on the socio-economic status of people and vice versa. I was lucky enough to work with Professor Rob Christley (Hon. Professor of Epidemiology at University of Liverpool), Professor Gina Pinchbeck (BVSc 1993) and Dr Andrew Stringer (BVSc 2005) (all Liverpool Alumni) as well as Professor Kenton Morgan who was my tutor and they all encouraged me to pursue my interests. At the time this was not such acommon path to take!
Claire’s career since graduating from Liverpool
Immediately after graduating I completed a research project in Ethiopia supervised by Prof. Rob Christley and Prof. Gina Pinchbeck with a TAWS grant. On completing it I headed into equine practice in Norfolk whilst exploring how to pursue a career overseas. By the following year I was accepted onto the MSc in Veterinary Epidemiology and Public Health at RVC. It was the best career decision I ever made! An entire world opened up before me of using veterinary knowledge and acquiring new skills to explore complex problems at a population level. From there I carried out my PhD which led me to assessing livestock health in drought areas and implications for livestock health services in the east horn of Africa. During all this time I was carrying out field work in increasingly remote areas and engaging with actors in the government and the NGO sector. I was also working in drought and conflict areas.
By the end of my PhD I was living in Kenya and had been offered a position to run a programme coordinating the monitoring and evaluation of humanitarian assistance in 2 particular regions of South Sudan. I spent 2 years based in Kenya but travelling for extensive periods across 2 conflict areas. It was tiring and by 2019 I decided to take a breather and reassess life and over the next 18 months I worked as a consultant on a number of projects in Sudan, Kenya and Somalia. It was during this period that I became increasingly frustrated by the lack of understanding of the development sector in the environment and how it was extrinsically linked to livestock and human health and well-being.
It was during this time that I became interested in Pangolins. This was partly an interest in something that very few people knew very much about, but also they represented to me and to a wider audience the biodiversity that we are losing. I began working on things in my spare time, talking to actors from community members to mid-level government and I saw the gaps in knowledge and capacity that were reducing efforts to protect Pangolin in range states. The work began as a consultant but by 2020 I had put together a not-for-profit organisation, registered as a CIO in the UK and had a number of small grants. Our work has grown ever since.
What are your top three career highlights?
Trekking across the Chalbi desert in northern Kenya to find specific pastoralists in their dry season grazing areas in my PhD.
The Kenya government talking about Pangolin in the context of essential species to protect on international news.
Providing support to our ever-growing team that adapts to all the challenges that they face to save a population of Giant Ground Pangolin.
Can you tell us more about the Pangolin Project?
The Pangolin Project is dedicated to the protection of Pangolin and the habitat on which they depend. The Pangolin Project is a 15-person team based in Kenya and working with national and community partners. We are currently focussed in one geographical area where there is an isolated population of Giant Ground Pangolin. The forest habitat has been subdivided and allocated to individual landowners. Closed canopy forest does not offer many livelihood opportunities and so over 80% has been cleared to make space for agriculture and livestock grazing. The population is at risk of extinction in the next 5 years. The primary threats that the population face are deforestation (charcoal trade and logging), habitat loss from the preceding and land use change to agriculture. Finally, electric fences are put in by landowners to deter wildlife but are a death sentence to Pangolin. The team monitors the Giant Ground Pangolin population and tags individual pangolin to ensure their protection and better understand their habitat use. However, we now work on a range of activities to mitigate the threats and to secure and restore 10,000HA of forest habitat for this unique species. We are doing this by working with landowners, community members, civil society groups including conservancies, other NGOS and county and national governments. Conservation has to be a financially viable alternative land use option for habitat protection to be a reality and so we are working to ensure that conservation not only ensures income through land leasing but can also meet the development needs of the communities living alongside wildlife. Increasingly our model is to use the Pangolin as a critical species of interest to leverage conservation efforts in areas that would otherwise be ignored.
Pangolin are unique creatures, solitary, nocturnal and only eating ants and termites, they pose no threat to human life or livelihood. They are a wonderful indicator species: they are dependent on multiple ant and termite species and so their presence is indicative of healthy soils, flora and insect life. They are therefore one of nature's great biodiversity indicators.
What is your advice for current veterninary students or alumni with a passion for animal advocacy?
The world needs change-makers and so if you are passionate about a cause then follow your gut, approach it and be in the space to make the change.
Do not put yourself at the centre of the change. Change is about collaboration and multiple people and partners working together to achieve a common goal. Oftentimes, what is needed is to bring those people together.
Do one thing every day that gets you closer to your goal and then persevere. Change takes time, you will hit many speed bumps, you will have to regroupand redirect yourself and others many times, but perseverance is critical.
Thank you, Claire, for helping us celebrate World Veterinary Day and our amazing global veterinary alumni community.
You can find out more about The Pangolin Project and how to support their work here: https://www.thepangolinproject.org/
If you have a story to share with the ULVAA, we would love to hear from you at ulvaa@liv.ac.uk