TRANSCRIPTION

Jay Ruderman:

Welcome to All About Change. Today I’m speaking with Dr. Michelle Oakley, a veterinarian specializing in treating all species of remote wildlife in Alaska and Yukon. As the only vet in the region, she’s a critical lifeline for local animals. Her work is featured on Nat Geo Wild, on the show Dr. Oakley, Yukon Vet. Her lifelong love of animals is evident in everything she does. Dr. Oakley, welcome to All About Change.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Thank you so much for having me.

Jay Ruderman:

So, Michelle, let me ask you, how did you decide to become a veterinarian?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

I think that was in my DNA somewhere. I don’t ever don’t really remember. Suddenly a light went on. It’s like I just always wanted to help animals. I always wanted to be around them. I wanted to be watching them. I spent a lot of time growing up … We lived on a creek. It was just like a suburban neighborhood, not too far, hour out of Chicago. And all I wanted to do was go down the creek, climb up on the trees, bait the raccoons into the house, just crazy stuff. My uncle had a dairy farm. I always wanted to be out there. So, I’m not sure.

And then, it was like I started watching a lot of the Nat Geo shows. They had the National Geographic Explorer series. When I was growing up they had Wild World of Animals. I mean, Jane Goodall was on there doing her thing, and that was just fascinating.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s amazing. And did you have any pets growing up?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah. I had everything just about, growing up. Everything from snakes to hamsters, dogs and cats, of course, horses. Even people in the neighborhood knew that if an animal was injured, found a baby rabbit, they’d bring it over. Baby raccoons, baby dog, anything that they thought needed help, they would bring to me, even as a little kid, which was pretty cool.

Yeah. So, I had a little bit of everything, but I really think, again, it was like watching the TV series that showed the wilds, not where I was growing up, but showed these wild places. I mean, that was the big allure for me. That’s where I wanted to go. Early on, that’s what I wanted to do.

Jay Ruderman:

Well, that’s awesome. And how old were you when people started bringing you injured animals and seeing if you could help fix them?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

I think, nine or 10. And my mom would be like, “Okay.” And she was always supporting me and she was probably helping do a lot of the work. But I remember raising baby ducklings when I was seven or eight years old, then we released them. That was pretty exciting too. It was hard to let them go, but then to watch them go away as a larger duck, and we took them to another place where it was sort of a soft release and they were feeding the ducks. And it was like, that was a good lesson too, I think, is I loved my pets, my dogs and cats that I wanted to keep. But then seeing the animals that I could help and put them back where they should go and watching them continue with their life, that was a lesson that hit me hard and early.

Jay Ruderman:

Wow. And so, you had this calling from a very young age. You mentioned that you were at your uncle’s farm. Were the adults in your life encouraging you at this point in time?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Oh yeah, totally. My grandma was always feeding all the stray cats in the neighborhood, so I’d help with that. But the dairy farm, my uncle said I was the only kid … Because there’s lots of cousins and stuff that would show up and want to help milk, and none of them want to get up at four o’clock in the morning. But he said I was the only one that would wake him up. He’d wake up and I’d be standing there like, “Is it time to go?” Yeah. And lots of encouragement.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s great.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

And when I was around 10 years old, I guess, I heard I was watching something and Nat Geo was talking about how Jane Goodall was going around, and I heard that she was going to be at Brookfield Zoo giving a talk. I was like, “Mom. Mom, we have to go.” And she pulled me out of school and took me, we went to listen to Jane Goodall in person. It was my equivalent of the biggest rock concert ever, to just sit there, listen to her talk about the things she was doing in person.

Couldn’t wait to get in line afterwards, go up, and she was releasing her new book at the time, Chimpanzees of Gombe, and get her to sign it. And I still remember to this day telling her, “I want to do what you’re doing.” I couldn’t wait to tell her that. I stood in line and I got up to her and I’m like, “I want to do what you’re doing.” She just looked at me and said, “And you shall.”

Jay Ruderman:

Wow. That’s amazing.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

And I’ll never forget that. Yeah. I’ll never forget … Anyone who’s seen Jane Goodall on TV, her just kind of angelic looks and voice and the confidence with what she spoke. It was just like, “Yeah. Okay, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Jay Ruderman:

Yeah. And that changed your life?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

I really think so. I think that moment and the encouragement I’ve had, it just, “That’s what I’m going to do.” “And you shall.” And I feel that pretty lucky now with this show, we’ve had a TV show and I have a lot of kids that write to me and they want to be a vet and they want to do these things, and I try to say the same thing to them. We say, “Yukon do it.” Super corny, but I’m a cornball. It’s just something to say to them is, “You can do it. You want to do it, why not? You will.”

Jay Ruderman:

I think it’s so important that we encourage people, especially younger people, to pursue their dreams, and that’s awesome. That’s an awesome story. Thank you so much for sharing that.

So, I want to ask you, when you decided to go into a career in veterinary medicine, how did you decide to become an all species vet instead of focusing on farm animals and house pets?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

In a way it’s a little decided for you. Every veterinarian that goes into vet school, it’s usually four years of undergrad and four years of the veterinary medical school. You have to study everything. And they encourage you not to pick a track of small animal, horses, large animal, wildlife, until you stay open to it until more like your second of four years. But all the way through, I wanted to do everything. I mean, I wanted to be a vet that helped with spay/neuter clinics in places where there wasn’t anyone to do that. I wanted to do the farm animal work, having grown up doing dairy work. I definitely wanted to go help wildlife, and really didn’t even realize or just wasn’t practical enough, I think at the time, to think about how would I get a job as a wildlife vet or a zoo vet? Because that was, I graduated in 2000 and there really weren’t that many wildlife vet positions. I think there was a couple in Canada, a few in the US.

I had went from Indiana to University of Michigan to the Yukon to do a wildlife study and then ended up staying there in the Yukon. So, then I wanted to go back there after vet school. So, there was no wild vet or any job like that, but luckily, I was too impractical to care. It’s just what I wanted to do. And so, as I got through vet school, it just kept coming back, “I want to do all of these things.” And really, I have to admit that the wildlife was what had my interest the most. But when you first graduate, you have to work at a small animal or a large animal clinic to get your basic skills down. But right away, the first job, second job, I guess, technically, I had was six months in. I started working for Yukon Fish and Wildlife on a wolf project, and I thought I was in heaven. It was a pretty lucky and amazing job to have.

[SHOW CLIP]

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Sierra and I are going to be vaccinating brown bears. Woo, that boy is big. That boy is big. Winter is coming, so we want to get them now before they get into hibernation.

Jay Ruderman:

Let me ask you, when you’re in Alaska and Yukon and you have to treat an animal in the wild, most of these animals are large and dangerous.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yes.

Jay Ruderman:

Just tell me how it happens. How do you get to the animal? How do you keep yourself safe? How do you keep your assistants, your crew safe, since you’re filming some of this, and help the animal at the same time?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Right. Because a big part of it is keeping them safe.

Jay Ruderman:

Right.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah. I think the situation can be so different. Everything from an orphaned moose calf or bear cub and making sure there’s nothing else around it and it is actually orphaned when you’re going to get it. Anesthesia, like darting animals, is really the main way that I can get my hands on them and safely work on them, because even a bear cub can really cause damage and hurt you, just because they don’t know you’re trying to help.

So, I’d say, half the time I’m working out of helicopters when we’re doing the wildlife work, because you’re flying in, having to find them in super remote areas where there’s no roads. And some of those are more like wildlife conservation studies where we’re getting information from that individual that helps us understand what the population needs. We’re putting radio and sat collars on that tell us where they’re traveling, what’s their most important habitat, is it okay that there is a proposal for a mine to go into this area? Then we have a better idea of where those animals need to be and all those important things.

But then other times, I’ve worked with some sea lion disentanglements and they’ve got plastic wrapped around their throat and they need help right now. And again, the sea lion we worked on this summer was a big bull. He’s probably 2,000, 2,200 pounds. There’s no way to just walk up to him. We couldn’t get up there and try to cut it or anything. He would just disappear. He would dive off the dock and disappear. But he was miserable. So, we had to dart him and hope that he didn’t go dive in and get trapped under a boat.

So, it’s a lot of figuring out your best anesthesia, the best way to dart them and sedate them so you can get your hands on them. And yeah, you mentioned keeping everybody safe. That’s a whole other layer.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

You mentioned keeping everybody safe. That’s a whole other layer.

Jay Ruderman:

Right. I think a lot of people listening to this show, they really care about wildlife, they care about our planet. And you’re doing the work on the front line, but you’re also putting yourself, you, your family and your crew at risk and you really have to, at some point, take a chance. Have you ever thought about that, that your personality is such that you are a risk-taker?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah, and I feel like a few people have said that to me. Like, “Oh, well, you like all the adrenaline.” I’m like, No, I don’t. It’s required to get this job done.” And, “Oh, you fly around in helicopters.” A lot of times when I’m darting, I’m wearing a harness and the door’s off and I’m hanging out and darting and they’re like, “Oh, you must really like skydiving.” And it’s like, “No, I really don’t. I get enough of that in my life.” And it’s what’s required to get the job done. I am afraid of flying, so I don’t like getting in jets. I don’t like getting in small planes, but that’s what you need to do to help animals to get the job done.

So early on, I had a mentor who was just like, “You just need to get over it.” And it’s like, I know that. And pull up your pants and get in there kind of thing. And then I find I’m not afraid at all when I’m doing the darting at all. The helicopters dive in and bomb and going up and down. And if you’re so focused on your goal and what you’re trying to do, you just do it. And I think there’s a bit of a lesson there for a lot of things. I remember talking to my girls about this. There’s a lot of fears that can hold you back from all kinds of things. It may not be just a fear of flying and you’re in a helicopter that’s diving, but getting over it and doing it and focusing on your long-term goal, it’ll get you through it.

Jay Ruderman:

Can you talk a little bit about your family? Because I know your girls are involved in the show and they help you out.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yep.

Jay Ruderman:

Talk about them and the different personalities and how they fit into your work.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah, they’re each their own beast, which is awesome. And early on, Sierra was always helping me, and Maya too. Sierra is my oldest. She’s 27 now, Maya’s 25, and Willow is 20. So they’re a lot older than we first started when they were seven, 14, and 15. So it’s neat to see how a lot of people who’ve seen the show over the years, for 10 years, they’ve watched the girls grow up. And they all help in their own way, and it’s really become more apparent I think in the last couple of years of what their best skills are.

Sierra, my oldest, has always been helping me set up the clinics, helping me put in IVs. I remember when she was 14, 15, she was putting in the IVs successfully, doing a great job helping me stabilize patients. During COVID, we were separated. She was on one side of the world and I was on the other, and we had a dog choking. And I got on FaceTime and talked her through how to put an IV in, sedate the dog and clear the obstruction. And there was just no other way to do it. That’s not something you should be doing with a kid who was 20 years old and is not a veterinarian, but there was just no other way to do it. And so early on, you could see she had what it took and the interest in becoming a vet. And so now she’s in vet school in her second year, so that’s pretty cool to see her follow that path.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s awesome.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah, and Maya, she such a cool kid. She really has the most empathy, I think, of all of us. She feels the animal’s pain. She’s been so valuable in the clinic because she’s just been always making sure that the animal is comfortable when they’re waking up from anesthesia, always making sure that we’re following up and how are they doing? Sierra and I are in there. Sierra’s often scrubbed in helping me with the surgery. And Maya’s monitoring, checking, making sure she’s there for the entire recovery at the animal, making sure that all its needs are met. And that’s such a wonderful skill. And now she’s working as a vet assistant as well part-time when she’s not working with me, so it’s cool to see her following that.

And then there’s Willow, who’s always been the most feral, and she’s one of the wild creatures, I’d say. She’d be along, but she’d be out in the mountains chasing things around or running around the farm or whatever. But she’s really come around to be just really into helping a lot of the feral animals. We started going to communities and she didn’t seem to have an assigned job. And next thing I know, she showed up with feral kittens that she found, someone told her about, she went in and dug them out of some hole and their mom had died and they were just a wreck. We go to a lot of remote communities to do clinics in Alaska. And they said, “Oh, there’s a bunch more.”

And by the end of the day, we had 22 feral kittens that were just on death’s door. Really, a lot of these Rhino infectious influenza virus, all kinds of problems like that. They were emaciated, so she took care of them really for the next few days. She talked our boat captain, which is how we got there, because we were going out to different ocean communities. Talked him into letting us take them back, worked with the local shelter, and then we had homes for 21 kittens when we got back already. So it’s just like, “Wow.” And at that point, she was I think 17 or something, and it was like, “Wow.” She had found her own way to help animals, so that was pretty cool to see.

Jay Ruderman:

And tell us how you first started getting into TV. How were you approached and what were your first thoughts on having yourself filmed as you’re working?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

It literally was just a random email that came through. They were looking for someone who was doing a lot of wildlife work. I honestly ignored at the time because I had less government. I had been the wildlife veterinarian for UConn Fish and Wildlife, but by that time I had three daughters. I’m divorced now, but my husband at the time was a firefighter, so he was gone all the time. So it was really getting hard to work full-time, have kids do all this stuff. And then the email came through again, this is the second time the email crossed. This time, it was sent from my best friends from vet school who was across the country in Newfoundland sent it to me. She’s like, “You should do this. They’re looking for a vet to be on TV.” And I was like, “Okay.”

They came out, but it was fun to share it. And they’re like, “Yeah, we just want to follow you.” They followed me in a little bit of the bison helicopter darting we were doing on the conservation project and a little bit of horse work. I thought it would just be a one-off thing. And then they said, “Oh, we’d like to do three more episodes and we’ll pay you.” And I was like, “Oh, what?” I had no idea. That was really, again, before much reality TV. I certainly wasn’t watching any reality TV. And I think Dr. Polo just started the year before, and so I just didn’t know much about it. And then it was like, okay, we’ll film for food, because this setup I have is not practical. I’m trying to travel all over the place. People can’t afford to pay me. I want to do the work.

I think the only thing that’s maybe not really true is the financial aspect of it. You can’t live as a vet. That traveling all over, that’s really expensive and there’s a lot of overhead, but with the show, I can go help all these people. And that was just amazing. It just suddenly opened my eyes. And I could work with equipment companies and get portable, and the type of medicine and the amount of animals and people that I could reach just blew up. That was super exciting. That was the best part about the filming, really.

Jay Ruderman:

You’re covering a large area, Yukon, Alaska. You’re traveling around the world to help exotic species. Is there a typical day for you and what does that look like?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Not really. There’s typical projects, I guess, that are seasonal. Right now, I go monthly to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. That’s my only real steady job. I’m the head vet there. I go there once a month. I’m on the phone and FaceTime almost every day doing telemedicine with my tech there to, “Okay, do this, do that,” kind of thing. But then I have to go there if there’s an emergency, and that’s 1200 miles away. Those are the distances you’re working with in Alaska. It’s not like I drive two hours. I have to drive 12 hours, or I have to do an hour and a half flight. So that’s my typical monthly thing. I go there. We work on all kinds. It’s a sanctuary, so we have orphaned muskox calves or moose or bears, whatever is needed. But then I also have other projects going. I hopefully plan to go to Madagascar later in the year or early next year to work with endangered lemurs.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s cool.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah. And then I’m going to Costa Rica. I work with a sanctuary there who gets in a lot of sloths that get electrocuted, electric shock on power lines or a lot of trafficked animals in Costa Rica. Tons. So trying to get that out. And when I went there last time, I organized someone who is an ultrasound specialist, a zoo ultrasound specialist, and then she helped us all learn ultrasound, which has become a really portable, handy tool, great for emergency medicine. And the vets in Costa Rica had never had that training. And we were able to get them both the ultrasound and the training. With a lot of these international trips, I feel a new goal or a new understanding of what’s really needed and what I can do. I can only help so many animals. I’m me. That’s all I can do. But if I can help train a lot of vets or get the right equipment in their hand… A lot of them know how to… They don’t need the training. They just need the equipment or the notoriety or the supplies. That becomes more-

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

… Or the notoriety of the supplies, that becomes more exponential of what I can do. So I feel like that’s really my new goal and what a lot of my projects are reflecting now.

[SHOW CLIP]

Speaker 1:

Let’s see how he does. Good boy, it’s okay. Oops, sorry buddy.

Jay Ruderman:

I’m a dog lover and we’ve talked about dogs on many of our shows. There’s a story that I’d like you to talk about, of a dog that you found that was brought to you with severe burns and that there was a unique … Someone taught you or told you to apply fish skin to the burns of the dogs. And can you tell me about that story and how it helped the dog?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah. There was a dog here in Haines that was tied to his chain. Went from the house and the people were away for the day, and then the house was caught on fire. When the firefighters came, the dog was actually on fire and they cut them loose and he took off running and it was a snowy day. He was rolling in the snow and then he took off. They couldn’t get their hands on him. He ran down a couple miles to the ocean and was in the ocean when they found him. And these people lost everything in the fire. And what they worried most about was losing their dog. It was incredible. They did not want to put the dog down. That was honestly my first thing was like, “Okay, this is horrible. You need to put this down.” And then actually a tech who I’d been working with at the time, she was the one who said, “Wasn’t there something about fish skin?”

I was like, “Oh, right.” I just read an article a few months before, about a vet at UC Davis. Her name’s Jamie Peyton. Wonderful, wonderful woman. She had been doing research on putting fish skin on wildlife that was burned in the California wildfires. So bears that burn their paws, they’ll put fish skin on their feet like slippers and they could be released so much faster. It was like it took away the pain, it covered up the sores. It decreased infection, which is a big problem with burns. So we reached out to Jamie, Dr. Peyton, and said, “We have this dog.” She works … She has this fish skin technique. She’s doing research on it and learned so much. Like she was saying, “Oh yeah, fish skin has been used in South America and Central America for years. It’s really an old technique, but we’re doing new research on it and I can show you how, and I’m trying to get the word out to other vets.”

And so she came and helped us and we were putting tilapia skin on this dog. He had 40% of his body, all across his back and his face were burned. And it’s like as soon as we cleaned that up and put the fish skin on, it’s like the amount of pain meds we had to give the dog went down more than half. We hardly had to give him any pain meds. His risk of infection went way down. He didn’t have any issues with infection, so we cut down a lot of the meds we had to give him. And within about two or three weeks, he was able to move around and do a lot of things where normally that severity of burns, it would be months, probably more like four months before he’d be to that point. So it was incredible to see how fast he healed and to learn that technique from an expert.

And then started looking into it more. I mean, now there’s recipes you can get where you can use the fish skin, how to take it right from the grocery store and treat it, for veterinarians, and use it. And then the bushfires happened in California right after that, sorry, in Australia. And so I reached out to Dr. Peyton. I’m like “Other vets, this is the perfect opportunity. Other vets really need to learn about this. Do you want to go?” And she said, yeah. So we did a GoFundMe, got all our airfare covered, got supplies covered for a bunch of probably five different organizations there that we helped fund. And then we trained a bunch of other vets in how to use fish skin and used it to treat some of the animals. It was so cool. It was such a cool experience to go there.

And both Willow and Sierra, my oldest and youngest came and worked out there for months and we did a lot of good work. And I feel like more than just treating the individual animals, we got this new technique out to a lot of vets, and it all started with Archer. We call Archer the Dragon Slayer. That was the dog that we had treated when he was covered in fish skin, he looked like a dragon.

Jay Ruderman:

But he survived.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

He survived. Oh yeah, thrived. He’s still alive. He’s still doing great.

Jay Ruderman:

You’re in a very stressful job. You’re encountering stressful situations. How do you handle your own mental health?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

I run and I exercise. That’s definitely a big part of it.

Jay Ruderman:

I love it.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

If I can’t get out and get exercise, I feel like a death light. Everything starts closing in. It’s also the way when I have … I haven’t had to deal with a lot of sick pets lately. I haven’t done a lot of clinics lately. When I was doing a lot more of the clinical work that is getting out trail running, getting out into the mountains, hiking up somewhere. I think not only the exercise is important, but the perspective of you’ve done what you can, the perspective of seeing everything below you, of seeing how you’re not that important in this world. Get back in there and do what you can, but it’s not all about you and what you’re feeling. Let it go and then move on so you can help more animals, I guess.

Jay Ruderman:

Good advice. Let’s talk about climate change because you are working in remote parts of Alaska and Canada and you’ve seen the effects of climate change on habitats, on animal behavior. How has these changes, maybe you can describe the changes, but how have they affected your work?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

It’s just you can’t predict the climate, I think is the biggest thing we see in Alaska and the Yukon. So many more animals doing things they wouldn’t normally do because they should have been hibernating but they weren’t. So they don’t go in hibernation. They’re hungry and they’re skinny and they’re doing … They’re getting in trouble. Way more problems with rain when there should be snow, and snow when there should be warmth. And so that causes all of those issues, just these strange weather patterns. We need the cold. A lot of these animals are specifically adapted to 20 below they’re great, but then when you start getting 20 above or 30 above in the winter and everything melts and then freezes, that snow solidifies and it’s no longer insulating, it’s no longer all the things that they’re depending on to happen, they can’t catch prey or they can’t get away from it.

So yeah, I see it and everything from animals that are too thin. We see a lot of issues with lynx and wolves and bears that just, either bears don’t make it through hibernation or they’re too thin or they’re getting in trouble. Or we see lots of things with a lot of the lynx and wild felids that they can’t survive and make it because of the lack of snow.

It’s a mess for sure, but it’s like these stories and we share the stories on the show of what happened. People hear about and they see. It’s like, I might be dealing with this one individual, that we had a bear that was severely emaciated that showed up, and we think it was probably to do with it could not hibernate appropriately. Came out in the middle of winter, and we were dealing with that and got it into a sanctuary. It’s like, well, that happened for a reason. And being able to share that story, people cared. When you talk about the individual animal and share that story, they care. They want to get the root cause and then they want to make a difference and they want to … So I think that really helps to have the show, get that message out.

Jay Ruderman:

Things are changing rapidly. I just read a case about a polar bear that came onto a beach in Iceland and was put down because they thought it was a danger to the population, but the animals are looking for new sources of food and new habitats, and it seems like our world is just changing in ways that we didn’t expect it to.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Yeah, it’s definitely extreme weather.

Jay Ruderman:

I want to talk about how you strive to lead a sustainable lifestyle with a low impact lifestyle on the area that you live in. Can you talk about how you do that?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

The biggest thing we do is to … Well, I mean, what are the ways? I mean, everyone tries to do recycling and all the kind basic things, but how you live within an area, even just the food, like the hundred-mile diet, it’s kind of an old concept, but we definitely try to eat and use food from around our area. We’re out berry picking just all spring, catching salmon from here, halibut. That’s really what we eat through most of the year. It’s really expensive and difficult to get food in to the remote areas where we live. So you try to adapt to where you live and how can it feed you and support you? I think that’s a big one.

Yeah, it’s tough in remote areas because … I like avocados. They don’t grow anywhere around here. So those kinds of things. There’s those things that are tough. And even things that seem really straight up, like recycling, it is really expensive to recycle from here and to get things out. But reusing is a much better way. So instead of buying everything new, we get so many things used, just keep reusing that item. Or if we need parts, you go and take it from somewhere else, or you do the things yourself. So a lot of that reusing and using things secondhand so there’s not so much demand out there. That’s a big part for me.

Jay Ruderman:

I wanted to ask you, for those people listening to the show, who care deeply about wild …Those people listening to the show who cared deeply about wildlife, our environment. Are there organizations that you’ve become connected to that people can turn to, to give money or get involved and help the environment and help wildlife in these areas?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

There’s a lot. I think that’s part of what I’m trying to do, is to go out and ground truth them a little bit and get their notoriety out, get them out there so that people can look towards them, support them, go volunteer.

The main one that I work for and volunteer for is the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. That one, we do so much work all over Alaska, Yukon. It’s a sanctuary and animals that can’t leave are given home but we’re also building now to do a rehab and release center, so that’s a great one.

I’m also working with the group Toucan Rescue Ranch in Costa Rica. They’re fantastic. They see so many critically endangered species and they’re just constantly… Sloths are coming in, ocelots, spider monkeys, the tayra, which is a really endangered, almost like a type of badger wolverine, in Central America. So there’s some fantastic groups out there, and we’re actually starting a YouTube channel to go into that a bit more. I can give you the link. My daughter knows all these details. So that’s the other great part about Maya, my daughter, she’s really good at social media and she’s my IT department. I can’t even remember the YouTube channel.

Jay Ruderman:

We’ll turn to her.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

But anyway, we’re going to… Please do. We’ll be working on that, it’s to go. We want to look at, not as part of the show, but just to go cover in a little bit more detail some of these different wildlife rescue organizations, and also the aspects of animals being trafficked, to try to bring that to light more. You have to be really careful. It’s quite dangerous because it goes way down into the depths of some of the crime that’s going on in those countries. But I think the more you bring out how wrong it is for the animals the less it becomes cool to have these animals just on your property running around, which is why a lot of them are trafficked by a lot of the drug cartels.

Jay Ruderman:

We touched on this but I wanted to ask you, since your show’s been out for 10 years, how has the exposure helped you with the work that you do?

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Getting companies on board, been able to work with some great radiology companies, some of the companies even that do the blood work testing, like Antech, Sound, all these companies are willing to give me equipment, not give, but let me use equipment for the work that’s life-changing. That gives them exposure and that helps me do a much better job. I can do much better medicine with that. Then I can work with a lot of these other different wildlife projects and people all over the world to help them get that exposure or get that equipment. So that notoriety is really what… That’s what I see it being about, is being able to get the stuff in the hands.

These great veterinarians and these really important biodiversity hotspots and great projects, they’re the ones that should be in there doing the work. They just need some tools. They need some help. They need some help with fundraising or they need just the equipment. So that’s really been amazing to be able to be a part of that. And sometimes they need training too, and I have a lot of experience in different types of anesthesia in different species, so I go to a lot of the places first to work with some of the people if they need training. But 9 times out of 10 I come out of there learning way more than I feel like I delivered. But that’s cool too. It helps the next one I work with.

We’ve worked on some products where the notoriety also has helped where maybe I’m getting some business opportunities to work on products. That’s been kind of touch and go. That’s a tough world and a tough business. But I think my ideal model is something like the Patagonia model of where you can get a product or going that’s good for somebody and then you can get this percent of sales back that then helps support the wildlife work. That’s the model I’m putting out there now and hoping to get going.

But otherwise, it’s more just trying to use a notoriety to get the word out to inspire people. I think that’s helped so much with the show. I get all these awesome letters, like these cool letters from kids especially, that they want to do what I’m doing, that they want to help animals, that they’re going to do it. It’s like, yes, if I do nothing else, that’s going to inspire change and people to get stuff done and help animals and go out into the world and make a difference. That’s so awesome and exciting that maybe Nat Geo helped me get that out.

Jay Ruderman:

That is so cool, because the impact that Jane Goodall had on you, you’re now having on the next generation.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Exactly.

Jay Ruderman:

That’s really important. Yeah. Michelle, I really want to thank you for what you’ve dedicated your life towards, helping animals in the most remote parts of the world and Yukon, Alaska, and other parts of the world, helping our world and helping those in need. And I want to thank you for who you are and what you do and the inspiration that you’re providing to others. And I want to thank you for being my guest on All About Change. It was a delight speaking to you.

Dr. Michelle Oakley:

Thank you so much. Thanks for the interest and I’m so happy to share these stories.

Jay Ruderman:

Today’s episode was produced by Yochai Maital and Mijon Zulu. To check out more episodes or to learn more about the show, you can visit our website, allaboutchangepodcast.com. If you like our show, spread the word, tell a friend or family member, or leave us a review on your favorite podcasting app. We’d really appreciate it. All About Change is produced by the Ruderman Family Foundation. That’s all for now. I’m Jay Ruderman and we’ll see you next time on All About Change.