David Waltner-Toews

A University Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph, David Waltner-Toews is founding president of Veterinarians without Borders/ Vétérinaires sans Frontières – Canada (www.vwb-vsf.ca), and a founding member of Communities of Practice for Ecosystem Approaches to Health (www.copeh-canada.org) and internationally. He has worked on every continent except Antarctica on ecosystem approaches to health. In 2010, in London, England, the International Association for Ecology and Health presented him with the inaugural award for contributions to ecosystem approaches to health, and was a speaker in the “Speakers of Renown” series that celebrated the 40th anniversary of Canada’s International Development Research Centre. In 2019 he received an award from the World Small Animal Veterinary Association recognizing “veterinarians who have exhibited exceptional acts of valour and commitment in the face of adversity to service the community.” Besides publishing more than 100 peer-reviewed scholarly papers on the health of people, other animals, and ecosystems, Waltner-Toews has written and/or co-edited textbooks on ecology and health published by Cambridge University Press, Columbia University Press, Taylor and Francis, CABI, and Routledge. These include “Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World,” edited by Valerie A. Brown, John A. Harris, and David Waltner-Toews. (Earthscan from Routledge, 2019), "Ecosystem Sustainability and Health: a practical approach" (Cambridge University Press, 2004), "The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability" (with Nina-Marie Lister and the late James Kay, Columbia University Press, 2008), “Integrated Assessment of Health and Sustainability of Agroecosytems” (with Thomas Gitau and Margaret Gitau, Taylor and Francis/CRC Press, 2008) and One Health: The Theory and Practice of Integrated Health. eds Zinsstag J, Schelling E, Waltner-Toews D, Whittaker M, Tanner M. Eds. (Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom: CABI, 2015.) His book On Pandemics: Deadly Diseases from Bubonic Plague to Coronavirus (Greystone, 2020) is a major revision and update of The Chickens Fight Back: pandemic panics and deadly diseases that jump from animals to humans (Greystone, 2007). Waltner-Toews' other books of popular science include: Food, Sex and Salmonella: why our food is making us sick (2008); The Origin of Feces: what excrement tells us about evolution, ecology and a sustainable society (2013); and Eat the Beetles: an exploration into our conflicted relationship with insects (2017). He has also published six books of poetry (The Fat Lady Struck Dumb, The Impossible Uprooting), a collection of recipes and dramatic monologues, an award-winning collection of short stories One Foot in Heaven), and a murder mystery (Fear of Landing).