Roberto Aguilar, DVM

Roberto Aguilar, DVM
The HSUS

Dr. Roberto Aguilar—known as Dr. Bob to his colleagues—is the new staff veterinarian at Cape Wildlife Center in Barnstable, Mass., a Fund for Animals and Humane Society of the United States affiliated facility that provides emergency care and rehabilitation for orphaned and injured wildlife 365 days a year.

Dr. Aguilar graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1987. After an internship in veterinary medicine at Oklahoma State University in 1990, he was the clinical resident for orthopedic avian surgery at the University of Minnesota's Raptor Center.

In 1992, he settled in New Orleans, where he became the senior veterinarian at the Audubon Zoo, treating all types of animals, from rhinoceroses to jaguars. He stayed there until September, 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit. After the storm, he was among a skeleton crew of employees at the damaged zoo caring for 1,500 animals while the city remained without electricity and running water for weeks.

Dr. Aguilar's next posts were at Chile's national zoo in Santiago, the Phoenix Zoo in Arizona, and Massey University in New Zealand.

Now that he's settled into life at the Cape Wildlife Center, Dr. Aguilar has the opportunity to pursue one of his passions—studying how changes in the environment are affecting wildlife. He shares detailed information about his cases with other wildlife veterinarians through a cooperative program with Tufts University's School of Veterinary Medicine. By sharing this information, veterinarians around the world can learn treatment techniques and begin to see patterns about environmental pollutants.

Dr. Aguilar has authored more than 50 journal articles, most of them on clinical zoo medical issues. His book on exotic animal medicine—Atlas de Medicina, Terapeutica y Patologia de Animales Exoticos – Editorial Inter-Medica, Buenos Aires—has been translated into several languages and is in its second edition.

A sought-after lecturer, Dr. Aguilar says he loves to work with veterinary students to show them, first hand, the unique issues involved in treating wild animals.

In March, he travels to the National Wildlife Rehabilitation Association conference in Washington state. He'll give a presentation about avian malaria, which he says has shown up in New Zealand penguins, masked bobwhite quail, and other bird species around the globe.