I'm a humble and admittedly modest volunteer at Dartmoor Zoological Park, but you may also have seen me hanging around places such as Gables Dogs' and Cats' Home (Plympton, Plymouth) and Mosi-Oa-Tunya National Park (Livingstone, Zambia). I'm Matthew Dickinson, and I've got a lot of stories to tell!
Over five years ago, I never would have believed I could have made it to where I am today. It all started when I spotted a small job advertisement in the local papers. "Volunteers wanted to help re-build zoological education department." Based on my previous work at Gables, I assumed this work would mostly be ground-cleaning and making the place look spik-and-span for the public as it were. Nevertheless I wasn't sure where my career was going to take me at that point - this was before I even finished my GCSEs. What I was sure of was that this Dartmoor Zoological Park place had animals I'd like to learn more about, and that without people like me they may even die thanks to the zoo's state at the time. I hadn't even heard of the place until that time, but I decided to dive into the position anyway, and was met with a very warm welcome! Things started slowly as to be expected from an absolute beginner. Heck, I didn't even know the difference between a turtle and a tortoise, immediately calling my personal favourite reptile in the collection the wrong thing entirely! Looking back however I'm amazed at how far I've come. I've co-operated with seven different "bosses" and dozens of other volunteers to help transform Dartmoor Zoological Park's education centre from a spot in the back of a shop to a pair of classrooms acting as a stronghold for our zoo-wide education programmes.
There's plenty more to tell about my past at DZP, but I'd like to save these stories for other posts when I get a chance. I'd also like to use some space to briefly introduce the African Lion and Environmental Research Trust, or ALERT for the short of mind and time. I've been on a pair of voluntary placements with this charity thanks to the generous support of my family (underlined so they spot this!), bursaries from specialist organisations and through my own personal efforts of saving funds from 'Chrimbo' jobs. Why did I go to the trouble? I'll put it this way; don't believe everything you read. There are some truly spiteful websites and newspaper articles that cast this charity in the wrong light, and there isn't a shred of truth to their harsh words. ALERT's "Lion Rehabilitation and Release into the Wild" conservation scheme is a piece of genius for a species that urgently needs it. To briefly summarise it here, the project takes captive bred lions, ensures they grow up to be healthy, socially stable adults, and releases them into controlled wild environments of 10,000 acres in size. Here they are free from human threats; there may be fences but you'd be hard pressed to call it anything but the wild. Furthermore the cubs they have are naturally timid around humans, and can be taken to areas in Africa that need new additions to the gene pool as quickly as possible. The African Lion is my personal specialty subject, and to be surrounded by the magnificent animals, and to communicate with so many others as passionate about the species as I am was pure bliss. Never mind my worries about the mosquitoes and snakes, I'll never forget my time in Zambia! Allow me some time in the future and I'll talk about some of my duties, the local culture (including languages!) and where this work experience should hopefully take me in the future.
And ultimately this is what it boils down to. To work in the zoological environment requires a lot of experience; probably a lot more than what I already have even. Even six years on and I still seek full-time employment in animal care and education, but in all those years I've got a lot of stories to share with you all. So please do drop by from time to time, and I'll update this as regularly as I can. I hope it will be fascinating to read, and if you are interesting in working with animals like me, I hope it can offer insight as to the kinds of things that go on in this line of work!
Thanks for reading! Please take a moment to check out the websites on the right, and the polls at the bottom of the page. You can also find episodes of ALERT's TV series, "Lion Country" above the polls. A photo gallery of my personal best animal snaps is coming soon too. Here's an example!
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