Dr. Bernard Master joined the Zoo Board in 2007 representing Franklin County. He is a distinguished health care professional and business entrepreneur who spent 36 years serving the inner-city low income and elderly population as a family practitioner in Columbus. He is also an internationally recognized birder and conservationist whose life list includes birding in 126 countries and territories on all 7 continents. He has observed 80% of the world's species, totaling 8,300 species. He is credited as the conservator of a previously unrecorded songbird and its habitat in Colombia; the Vireo mesteri, or Choco Vireo, is named for his family, and the discovery was published in the scientific literature. He also created the first model for self-sustaining nature preserves, with eighteen to follow, in Columbia.