EXPERIENCE AND ACHIEVEMENTS

• The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust, NY, NY- Program Director - 2012-Present
  • • Building and leading staff and consultants in strategic planning, grants management, due diligence, site visits and maintaining close supportive relationships with grantees. Engaging grantees in collaborative efforts towards mutually agreed upon goals. Work closely with trustee to ensure mission fulfillment. Grants to support over 35 NGOs in strategic, mostly community-based and protected area focused, conservation in Gulf of California, Mexico; Galapagos Archipelago, Ecuador; Madagascar and Myanmar. Major medical research grants include the Helmsley Center for Genomic Medicine at the Salk Institute, support of the Center for Advanced Digestive Care at NY Presbyterian Hospital and funding of digestive disease research at Rockefeller University.
• Mayday Fund, NY, NY- Advisor- 2002- present
  • • Foundation dedicated to alleviating human physical pain. Review research grant proposals. Contribute experience on policies and governance.
    • Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, NY: A global zoological and field wildlife conservation organization with staff worldwide.
    • Manages five New York City zoological parks including the Bronx Zoo. Over 4 million guests annually. Active field programs in over 60 countries.
• Special Advisor to President and CEO- 2011-2012
• Executive Vice President and General Director- 2007- 2011
• Acting Director, New York Aquarium- 2007-2008
• Chief Veterinarian (1990-2007) and Vice President of Wildlife Health (1999-2007)
• Assistant Clinical Veterinarian: 1988-1990

Key Achievements:

• Chief Veterinarian overseeing care for 1300 species in 5 zoological parks and global field health programs.
• Acting Director, NY Aquarium – reorganized management structure, oversaw operational improvements and participated in the design of a major capital improvement plan scheduled for completion in 2016.
• General Director overseeing programs and operations at the NY Aquarium, Central Park, Queens and Prospect Park City Zoos and the flagship Bronx Zoo.
• Fundraising- philanthropic donors, foundations, corporations and government grants.
• Liaison to board of trustee committees.
• Worked with elected officials and agency representatives from New York City, New York State, the U.S. government and multi-lateral organizations including OIE, FAO and WHO.
• WCS global field veterinary program, established 1989 as the first of its kind.
• One World-One HealthTM program, 2004, convened government agencies in wildlife, domestic animal and public health with NGOs and academics to develop integrated approaches to emerging disease threats globally.
• Coordinated the WCS West Nile virus programs that led to the identification of the first emergence of West Nile virus in the western hemisphere. Host, NY State Assembly funded West Nile Virus Action Workshop 2000.
• Testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works concerning health threats posed by the illegal trade in wildlife for pets and bush meat in 2003 following the emergence of monkey pox.
• Extensive media experience in print, on television and radio including West Nile Virus outbreak in 1999, avian influenza concerns, marine mammal strandings, and removing tiger from an apartment in Harlem in 2003.
• Columbia University, NY, NY - Adjunct Professor - 2004-2007, 2012 to Present
• Lecture, team-teach, individual student mentoring, office hours, examinations and grading.
• Graduate course on Environmental Policy in School of International and Public Affairs- 2004-2007, 2013-present
• Graduate capstone course in Sustainability Management, Earth Institute- 2012
• Graduate course on Advanced Management in School of International and Public Affairs- 2004-2005
• Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, Colorado Springs, CO- Head Veterinarian- 1983-1985
• Aspenwood Animal Hospital, Denver, CO- Small Animal Practitioner- 1981-1983

EDUCATION

• Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs New York, NY
  • • Executive Master in Public Administration (Class Marshal) 2002
• Wildlife Conservation Society Bronx, NY
  • • Residency, Zoological Medicine 1985-1987
• Animal Medical Center New York, NY
  • • Internship, Small Animal Medicine and Surgery 1981
• University of Pennsylvania, School of Veterinary Medicine Philadelphia, PA
  • • Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (Magna Cum Laude) 1980
• Michigan State University, College of Natural Science East Lansing, MI
  • • Bachelor of Science, Microbiology (High Honors) 1976

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Executive Board of the International Species Information System (ISIS): 2010-2012
• Amphibian Survival Alliance, IUCN, Executive Board: 2010-2011
• Safe Affordable Food Everywhere (www.ssafe-food.org)- Founding member of corporate consortium for food security 2005-2008
• Association of Zoos and Aquariums- Chair and Co-Chair Animal Health Committee: 2000-2005
• American Association of Zoo Veterinarians, Executive Board & President: 1994-1998
• Associate Editor of the Journal of Zoo and Wildlife Medicine: 1988-1991
• Frequent lecturer to professional, academic and lay organizations
• International travel and work experience in 40+ countries
• Publications- Author or co-author of over 100 scientific papers and abstracts

Dr. Bob Cook is a veterinarian who has spent his career in wildlife health, conservation, medical research, academia and foundation philanthropy. In addition to his teaching responsibilities at Columbia University, he is also the Grant Development Officer for Environment and Science at the Zegar Family Foundation, the Senior Science Advisor at the Mayday Fund, and Editor-In-Chief for the Journal of Avian Medicine and Surgery. In the recent past he served as the Program Director for Conservation and Basic Medical Research at the Helmsley Charitable Trust. For a number of years before that, he served as the Chief Veterinarian and then as the General Director the Wildlife Conservation Society. In this role he led a team responsible for the operations of five New York zoological parks including the Central Park, Queens and Prospect Parks Zoos, the New York Aquarium, and the Bronx Zoo. He has worked extensively in rural international settings and on global policy issues focused on the health of people, domestic animals, and wildlife. His environmental grantmaking experience includes environmental justice, climate change mitigation and adaptation, community-based conservation, protected area establishment, biodiversity, marine conservation, and food security. Dr. Cook has served as an Adjunct Assistant Professor at SIPA from 2004 to 2007 and then from 2013 to present. He has also served as a Lecturer in the School of Professional Studies in 2012 and then again beginning in 2017 to present in the Master of Science in Sustainability Management program.

TUSS, the so-called matriarch of the elephants at the Bronx Zoo, passed away last week, and given her 26-year history of welcoming generations of visitors, and what all agree was a gentle and generous nature, it would be callous to lead off with the question that nonetheless looms large:

How do you dispose of a 10,000-pound dead elephant?

No, far better, when sitting down with Dr. Robert A. Cook, chief veterinarian of the Wildlife Conservation Society, to first spend some time chatting about the life and last days of Tuss.

Tuss (rhymes with puss) was, after all, the elephant face of the zoo; offered up for photo ops, seen for years in a ''Sesame Street'' film clip having a bath.

Dr. Cook, however, is a scientist and investigator. In the arena of feelings and letting them run wild, he appears, at first, to prefer a contained approach.

The death of Tuss, he says somewhat stiffly, ''was a tremendous loss.'' She was a ''fine ambassador'' for her species.

He discusses, in clinical detail, the way the elephant went off her food a week ago Monday, and the efforts of the veterinary team to treat her. (''Her keeper asked her to please stand and give her an ear, and I took a syringe and needle for a blood sample. There are good veins in the ear.'')

He talks about making the difficult decision the following Thursday that Tuss was suffering and would have to be euthanized. They administered the drugs outside Tuss's home, the Elephant House, first giving her a sedative, then, when she was asleep, the ''euthanizing agent.'' It's a gentle way to go, Dr. Cook said.

But do not confuse a stiff upper lip with an indifferent heart.

The day of this discussion is Dr. Cook's graduation from Columbia University, a triumphant day in which he will receive a master's degree in public administration after two years of weekend study, but he has removed all the congratulatory cards from his office walls in anticipation of this interview. It wouldn't be right to keep them there, he says. This is about Tuss.

He also speaks, after a visit to the forested area where Tuss was buried, of Tuss's last hours, in which the people who worked with her had a chance to say goodbye.

It takes prompting for him to discuss his own farewell.

''I WENT and stood in front of her. Her third eyelid -- it's in the inner corner of the eye, you can see it in dogs -- was shut, but she recognized me and opened her eye. And I just stood with her a few minutes and looked into her eye.''

And then, after Tuss was dead? ''They lifted her on to a truck with a forklift and moved her to the burial area, where we did a complete necropsy.''

This was done when the zoo was closed.

Was there ever a consideration of using Tuss's remains as a source of meat?

The slightest tremble of outrage, although this, it turns out, has to do with health concerns.

''None of our animals would ever be consumed by other animals,'' Dr. Cook says. ''There would be the concern of disease spiral. If someone dies of illness, you want to be certain what the illness was. All day Friday we had 10 people, including the head of pathology, doing the necropsy. We would not let her die in vain.''

Biographical notes, now, on Tuss the elephant and the man who was one of her many health providers -- for at the Wildlife Conservation Society, which runs the Bronx Zoo, there are 18 veterinarians on staff.

The elephant, 50, was born in the wild in Assam, India. The zoo's title of ''Matriarch'' was strictly an honorarium; Tuss never reproduced -- the herd at the zoo is entirely female. She was, however, an affectionate companion to younger elephants, like 10-year-old Samuel R. II, who despite the name is female and lived with Tuss in the Elephant House compound.

Dr. Cook, 47, was born in Emerson, N.J. His father, an electrical engineer, had as a boy come to the United States from Germany, narrowly escaping the Holocaust, and this, Dr. Cook says, brought a sense of reverence for life to the household. He was also affected by the annual camping summer trips the family made to Montana and the animals in the wild. Married to an actress, he came to the Bronx Zoo 17 years ago and has two children, ages 7 and 10.

At the zoo, Dr. Cook has performed surgery on animals as small as an eight-inch fish, the Lake Victoria cichlid, and as large as a female rhinoceros. The surgery on the fish, to remove an ovarian tumor, was performed on a sponge, as anesthetized water suffused with oxygen ran over the fish's gills. It was successful. The surgery on the rhino, to remove a uterine tumor, was done with specially made large sutures and carpet needles that had been sterilized. The rhino suffered postoperative complications and was buried in the same unmarked wooded area as Tuss.

Why isn't the elephant's graveyard open to the public?

''We call it a burial ground,'' says Dr. Cook, still the scientist.

Then: ''It never crossed my mind that is something we would do. It's more for their bodies to go back into nature. Everyone's view of life and death is different. My memories are still when I close my eyes I see Tuss looking at me, and standing in front of that site wouldn't enrich that.''

To the Editor:

Re "The Menace from Avian Flu" (editorial, Oct. 12):

The greatest threat of spread for avian flu is through the live-bird markets, the movement of poultry handlers and infected domestic birds. The world's leading health scientists who gathered in New York on Sept. 29 for a One World-One Health symposium drew this clear conclusion.

Human vaccination is an appropriate reaction to avian flu when it mixes with the human flu virus and becomes a "super flu." But much more must be done now to avert this.

Education of society and governments on the proper care and handling of poultry, the deadly risks of the exotic pet bird trade and the practices of "sports" like cockfighting must be much more effective if we are to minimize the potential for a global pandemic.

Robert A. Cook Bronx : The writer is chief veterinarian, Wildlife Conservation Society/Bronx Zoo.

NEW YORK — Those of us who have been studying avian influenza and other bird diseases for decades, when few people beside pet owners and the poultry industry cared, are dismayed that voices of reason are being drowned out with regard to the role played by wild birds in the spread of the H5N1 virus.

This past week alone, both the United Nations and the Office of Homeland Security implicated migratory birds as the most likely carriers of H5N1 to American shores, while cable news scrambled to get bird migration maps.

Migratory fowl could, of course, bring H5N1 here on the wing. But there is an equal, if not greater, chance that H5N1 will fly to North America on an airplane transporting poultry legally or otherwise. Recently a shipment of chicken feet was smuggled into the United States from Thailand, arriving in Connecticut marked "jellyfish." Luckily, our trade surveillance system worked and the chicken parts were confiscated.

Over the last 30 years we have learned a tremendous amount about how avian influenza spreads. In nature, avian influenza viruses live innocuously in many types of wild birds and cause only mild effects, sometimes none at all, similar to many bacteria and viruses that live in humans.

This is not to say that the virus can't be carried by, and kill, wild birds, because it can. Yet the spread of H5N1 from the activities of wild birds pales in comparison to a very human activity- trade.

We know that international trade in wild or exotic birds, both legal and illegal, has helped moved H5N1around the world. However, the virus has likely gotten its biggest boost through the trade, both legal and illegal, in poultry.

As part of a multi-billion dollar industry, poultry markets and farms span the globe. The conditions of these facilities vary greatly; some are plagued by highly unsanitary conditions and close bird-to-bird contact. This environment provides the ideal setting for deadly strains of the avian flu virus to develop.

Moving these infected poultry and poultry products as well as contaminated fecal matter on trucks, boots or in cages results in the further spread of avian flu.

The current focus on the role of migratory birds in the spread of H5N1 has shifted discussion away from this trade.Even perfect security ultimately won't work if we do not begin to address the role of trade in the spread of avian flu and the host of other diseases that can jump between humans, wildlife and domestic animals.

A similar concern arises when we look at the multi-billion dollar legal and illegal trade in wild animals. Not only does this practice put wildlife populations at risk, it also creates unique opportunities for novel pathogens (viruses, bacteria, and fungi carried by these animals) to exploit new hosts unprepared for their arrival.

The pet trade in African rodents brought Monkey Pox to our doorstep just a few short years ago. Yesterday it was Monkey Pox, today it is avian flu, and tomorrow avian flu could morph into a pandemic. If we do not address animal and wildlife trade, it is just a matter of time before the next zoonotic disease hits.

Understanding the spread of H5N1 is critical to our ability to contain it. Congress recently passed legislation including provisions for a global H5N1 monitoring network for both wild and domestic birds that will help determine areas at future risk. Without this type of network, along with sound epidemiological study, conclusions will remain in large part conjecture.

We need to remember that the human deaths related to H5N1 since its identification in 1997 have been traced to close contact with poultry. We also need to understand that changing our current practices on a global scale is necessary to contain this and future viruses.

The first step is educating peopleon how to safely handle domestic poultry. Ultimately, our goal should be a global system of trade that ensures the movement of quality domestic animal food products and excludes wildlife for food or as pets.

To that end, border security must be enhanced so that the potential for contaminated products of the domestic and wildlife trade do not cross into nations that are not yet infected.

(Robert A. Cook is chief veterinarian and vice president and William B. Karesh is director of the Field Veterinary Program at the Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx Zoo, New York.)