Ashley Franklin
September 2015
Health Care Ashley
Ashley Franklin fills a vital role in Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium's mission to promote conservation on behalf of the world's wildlife. Her position title is Reproductive Biology Post-Doctoral Fellow, and her duties consist of reproductive research for the Red wolf, but also include the zoo's tigers and clouded leopards. Ashley has an impressive resume and passion to match it, and her research could extend to animals not only at our facility, but to animals in the wild as well.
Ashley was born and raised in Springfield, Vermont. She got her Bachelor's degree in Biology in 2005 from the University of Maine at Machias. While she was an undergrad, she did a research project looking at the genetic hybridization between wolves and coyotes in Maine. At that point in her life, she had the intention of becoming a zoo keeper. She spent five months at the Caldwell Zoo in Texas as an Animal Care Intern in the mammals department. She loved working with animals, but felt the desire to continue research and go to graduate school. She then got both her Masters and PhD degrees in Animal Science from the University of Maryland. During this time, she worked with the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute and the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia for her dissertation research which was focused on the roles genetics, stress and inflammation play in the health of captive cheetahs. This led Ashley to her position at PDZA.
Ashley heard about the position at PDZA when her research advisor at the Smithsonian forwarded her the job posting. Since she was particularly interested in doing reproductive research, she decided to take the job. Her specific job tasks explore methods of sperm collection and cryopreservation, for use in artificial insemination, as well as increasing the number of males represented in the Genome Resource Bank, which would be an enormous help to the Red wolf's population.
It is clear that Ashley loves animals, but she says that she specifically has an affinity for felines. Her favorite animal at PDZA is Jasper the Lynx. If she could be any animal, she would choose to be a lion, because their lives involve eating, sleeping and hunting, and they still get to be social unlike most other felines.
When she is not at the zoo, Ashley likes to work out, dance (hip hop and line-dancing are two of her favorites), watch movies, and enjoy a good microbrew. If she could have any superpower, she would use mind control to get politicians to pass environmentally friendly legislation. When asked what she wants to learn, she says that she would like to learn statistical programming in R. When asked what most people don't know about her, she says that she was voted “most likely to succeed” in High School. If she could have an endless supply of any food, she would have pizza – extra cheese with a drizzle of pesto and roasted red pepper. The one goal she would like to accomplish in her lifetime would be to travel to all seven continents. Specifically, she would like to visit the Steppes of Mongolia to search for wild Pallas’ cats.
Ashley Franklin's passion and dedication to our animals is evident through the valuable research she does, and we are fortunate to have her at PDZA. We should thank her for her hard work, and also thank her for being a strong factor in demonstrating Point Defiance Zoo's commitment to helping wildlife.
AAZK’s Zoo Stars!
Randomly chosen participants will receive a $5 gift card of their choice.
Zoo Stars can be any permanent staff, seasonal/temporary staff, volunteer, or intern from any department