THE PAW PROJECT TEAM

Jennifer Conrad, DVM, Director

Kirk Wendelburg, DVM, Chief of Surgery, Animal Specialty Group

Willow Evans – Animation Producer

Jerry Gillaspie – Programmer

Bob Hershon – Animation and Video Producer

Jan Northrop – Video Producer

Lisbet Thoresen – Designer and Web Architecture

About Jennifer Conrad, DVM, Director

Dr. Conrad has cared for wildlife on six continents for over two decades. She is an impassioned advocate for animal welfare, who has seen first-hand the suffering and exploitation of animals, destruction of habitat, and gratuitous hunting—all of which threaten the welfare and very survival of many species. Dr. Conrad has participated in many programs to protect and improve the lives of wild animals. She has traveled to Namibia to de-horn rhinos, making them unattractive targets for slaughter by poachers who prize the horns for ornamental uses. While in Africa, she worked with the Cheetah Conservation Fund, collecting information to help fortify the dwindling numbers of this species. In Nepal, Dr. Conrad treated endangered Asian elephants, and in the Galapagos Islands, she joined government scientists treating a threatened population of sea lions.

Dr. Conrad is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, School of Veterinary Medicine and is a member of the American Veterinary Medicine Association (AVMA) and the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians (AAZV).

Currently, Dr. Conrad's professional responsibilities are divided between non-profit wildlife sanctuaries for unwanted and abused animals in southern California and her own company, Vet to the (Real) Stars, which provides humane veterinary care to animals appearing in television and movies, including Doctor Dolittle 2 and the re-make of The Planet of the Apes.

In her former role as head veterinarian at a wildlife sanctuary, she founded The Paw Project, which rehabilitates big cats, such as lions, tigers, cougars, and jaguars, maimed by declawing. Actually a partial amputation of the last bone in the cat's toe, declawing often cripples these magnificent creatures, both from the pain caused by the bone fragments left behind, and from the progressively debilitating arthritis produced by abnormal stress on other joints as the cats try to avoid walking on