Our Facilities, Team and Bespoke Training
Topic outline
-
-
Key staff from Durrell involved in our training delivery
Dr Tim Wright
Conservation Training Manager
Tim oversees all of Durrell’s conservation training activities. Before joining the Academy in 2010, Tim previously worked for eleven years in Durrell's Mammal Department. During that time he was responsible for the lemur collection at Durrell, as well as carrying out fieldwork in Madagascar, providing GIS support to staff, co-ordinating population management of several captive breeding programmes, and working in Durrell’s conservation genetics lab. Tim oversees all course design, delivery and assessment, and is also responsible for liaising with the University of Kent for validated courses and ensuring that they are maintained at high standards.
Dr Helen Gath
Conservation Training Officer
After obtaining a BSc in Zoology, Helen spent three years in Mauritius, which led to her PhD research on Echo parakeets. Whilst working for DEFRA and various NGOs since, Helen gained experience in species monitoring to inform policy and practice and in teaching the practice of successful conservation. Helen supports the delivery of the DESMAN graduate certificate course at the Academy and is developing a professional development programme and online learning management system for course participants and graduates across the world.
Gale Glendewar
Conservation Knowledge Officer
Gale provides operational and strategic support across Durrell’s Academy, Learning and Conservation Departments and manages the Zoo Internship programme. She has an MSc in Environmental Management and Conservation and has worked for Durrell for 17 years with much of this time spent as a mammal keeper. She has provided training in tamarin husbandry in South America and worked on radio tracking and camera trapping projects on behalf of Durrell. She currently coordinates three endangered species studbooks.
Liz Purgal
Academy Administrator
Liz is responsible for all the administrative processes for prospective students from initial enquiry and application, to post-course evaluation. She is responsible for marketing the courses, in addition to monitoring and evaluation both in terms of course content and participants' professional development. Liz is a Marketing & Communications professional who studied Environment & Conservation at Manchester University; during her career and since moving to Jersey in 2004 she has worked in both private and public sectors.
.
Dr Andrew Routh FRCVS
Head of Veterinary Services
Andrew is a veterinary surgeon with nearly 40 years’ experience, over 25 in full-time zoo, wildlife and conservation medicine. He has worked on four continents with diverse species, including the ploughshare tortoise, Madagascan pochard, mountain chicken, pygmy hog, pink pigeon, Asia’s Gyps vultures, stranded marine mammal and turtles, chimpanzees in Sierra Leone and orangutans in Borneo. Andrew has published and lectured widely, as well as leading in-country capacity-building exercises with conservation workers. He became a Fellow of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons in 2019.
Harriet Whitford
Deputy Head of Bird Department
Harriet first joined Durrell’s Bird Department in 1999. Originally trained on all bird routines, she spends most of her time now working on the Wetland section. She is responsible for both the Meller’s duck and Madagascar teal studbook and has a keen interest in avian incubation. While developing and applying her incubation skills here, she has also applied her knowledge in-situ; incubating and hand rearing both the Madagascar fody and olive white-eye in Mauritius. Harriet regularly teaches bird husbandry and egg incubation skills.
Dominic Wormell
Head of Mammal Department
Dominic is an internationally renowned expert on the captive management of marmosets and tamarins, and has contributed to several in-situ recovery and reintroduction programmes for these small monkeys in their native South America, and on building up the skills needed by conservationists to care for them in their own countries. He has worked for Durrell for over 25 years and was involved in the first ever reintroduction to the wild of a captive-born black lion tamarin, and has been instrumental in generating support for the restoration of the Atlantic Forest.
Dr Glyn Young
Head of Bird Department
Glyn manages wide scale bird monitoring in Jersey and specialises in wildfowl of the Indian Ocean. His MSc and PhD are for research on Meller’s duck and Madagascar teal. He first visited Madagascar in 1989 searching for Madagascar pochard, finally seeing one in 2006. He manages Durrell’s captive-breeding programme for this species and locally the red-billed chough reintroduction project. His work has encompassed the conservation of the mangrove finch in the Galápagos, the restoration of the Floreana Mockingbird, endemic dry forest birds in St Lucia and in Samoa, the conservation of the endemic Tooth-billed Pigeon, the ‘Little Dodo’.
Dr Eluned Price
Zoo Research Manager
Eluned first encountered Durrell as an undergraduate when she came to Jersey to do a short project on tamarins. After completing a PhD at the University of Stirling on cotton-top tamarins and carrying out field work on primates in Brazil, she returned to Durrell and became an experienced researcher and mammal keeper. Eluned is now responsible for co-ordinating all research carried out within Jersey Zoo.
Dr Lesley Dickie
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust Chief Executive Officer
Lesley joined Durrell in 2016, launching its new nine-year strategy, ‘Rewilding our World’ in 2017. Educated at the universities of Glasgow (BSc Zoology), Cambridge (MPhil Biological Anthropology) and London (PhD), she began her career in zoos at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland. After completing field work in Madagascar and finishing her doctorate she began working at the Zoological Society of London. In 2008 Lesley took on the role as Executive Director of the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and in 2011 began the ‘EAZA Academy’ training initiative.
Dr Mike Hudson
Conservation Science Manager
Mike has a PhD on the conservation of the mountain chicken frog in the face of chytridiomycosis, a globally devastating fungal disease responsible for hundreds of amphibian extinctions. Mike’s work focusses on the science underpinning the conservation of Durrell’s species across the world, and includes work on a range of taxa from amphibians to mammals, reptiles and birds. Mike is especially interested in the monitoring of threatened species and loves spending time in the field with Durrell’s dedicated field teams.
Prof Carl Jones MBE
Chief Scientist
Carl has worked on the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues since 1979, now based partly in the UK, he is responsible for leading programmes to save the endangered endemic bats and birds of the Mascarenes, including the Rodrigues fruit bat, Mauritius pink pigeon, Mauritius kestrel and echo parakeet. He is currently directing the recovery of Mauritius passerines (in particular the Mauritius fody and olive white-eye) and the conservation of several endemic reptiles, and restoring plant communities. In recognition for his outstanding contribution to species contribution, Carl won the prestigious 2016 Indianapolis Prize – awarded to the world’s greatest conservationists.
Hanitra Andrianantenaina
Madagascar Training Officer
Hanitra Nomentsoa Andrianantenaina joined in 2020 as Durrell's new Madagascar Conservation Training Officer. Based in Antananarivo, she works closely alongside Durrell’s existing Madagascar conservation staff, and is leading the design and delivery of our new training programme to build capacity among individuals and organisations involved in the co-management of Madagascar’s Protected Areas. Hanitra has an extensive background in conservation and capacity building, having worked most recently for GIZ in Madagascar.
Dr Bela Barata
Field Programmes Officer
With a PhD in Biodiversity Management by the University of Kent, Bela expertise is population dynamics and monitoring. She is interested in ecology and conservation of species and their habitats, with special focus in rare and threatened tropical species. Bela has developed models that investigate population trends, improve the design of long-term monitoring programmes, and predict areas of occurrence of new populations of range-restricted species. With great enthusiasm Bela always puts scientific knowledge into practice in order to better inform habitat management and improve species conservation.
Dr Nik Cole
Islands Restoration Manager
Nik’s work with Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF) and the Mauritian Government’s National Parks and Conservation Service, focuses upon the restoration of island ecosystems, through the reintroduction of threatened fauna and flora to rebuild native communities, the use of analogue species to restore lost ecological interactions, and the management and removal of invasive species. Primarily located in Mauritius, Nik has a PhD from the University of Bristol and is involved with research and restoration projects within the Indian Ocean and Caribbean.
Daniel Craven
Volunteer Manager
Daniel is the current chairman of BIAZA Volunteers Managers Working Group and member of BIAZA MEC. He enjoys working on design of conservation workshops and meetings for a variety of internal and external clients including Durrell’s fundraising, operations, education and mammal teams, MWF and BIAZA. Daniel is Durrell’s full time Volunteer Manager and soccer fan, part time facilitator and filmmaker. For the Academy he specialises in teaching facilitation and communications skills for conservation.
Luke Jones
Caribbean Regional Programmes Manager
Luke has a particular interest in using knowledge gained from ex-situ conservation work and research, to inform and develop in-situ rewilding strategies. Having trained with Durrell in Mauritius on the Endangered Species Recovery PGDip course, that combined both aspects of field work and theory, he was later recruited as a research assistant and ultimately Project Coordinator for the Mountain Chicken Recovery Programme; during which time he spent 3 years working to reintroduce the critically endangered mountain chicken frog to Montserrat through development novel habitat manipulation techniques designed to counter the impacts of lethal amphibian chytrid fungus. Today, Luke is based in St. Lucia where he works alongside local partners to develop and implement novel conservation strategies for endemic species such as the St. Lucian racer snake, whiptail, iguana & white breasted thrasher.
Martine Goder
Head of Durrell Conservation Training, Mauritius.
Martine leads the internship programme in Mauritius, supports the Madagascar conservation training team and is leading the professional development programmes for conservation practitioners in the Southwest Indian Ocean region. She holds a MSc in Conservation Leadership and prior to joining Durrell worked for the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation managing both the Flora Programme and Education Programme. She has more than 18 years’ experience in conservation, specialising in forest and ecosystem restoration; recovery and in-situ & ex-situ management of highly threatened endemic reptile and plant species of Mauritius; invasive species management; ecological replacement; and education & community outreach.
Jess Sweeney
Field Programmes Delivery and Impact Manager
Jess has worked in Conservation for 8 years in the areas of project design, impact evaluation, grant management and fundraising, since studying an MSc in Conservation Science at Imperial College London. Before this, Jess worked in advertising with a focus on the design and implementation of behaviour change campaigns for government clients and seeks to apply and share this knowledge to influence behaviour relating to wildlife trade and sustainable use of resources.
Harriet Croome
Conservation Livelihoods Manager
Harriet supports the design and delivery of Durrell’s integrated biodiversity conservation and rural development initiatives, primarily in Madagascar and India. She been with Durrell for nearly four years. She holds an MSc in Science Communication and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham researching the effects of human-wildlife conflict on forest socio-ecological systems in Kenya. Her principal research interests include understanding and evidencing conservation-livelihood connections; approaches to natural resource governance; and how local and global voices join forces, or come into conflict, in response to conservation challenges.
Felana Rafetrason
Madagascar Project Officer
Felana joined Durrell Madagascar in 2022 as a Project Officer for an initiative that aims to strengthen the capacities of Protected Area managers. Prior to this, she studied Forestry and Environment, Environmental Impact Assessment and has always been involved in several associations for biodiversity conservation in her country. In addition, Felana has previously worked for an international NGO focused on capacity building. This allowed her to gain experience in training activities such as designing and developing modules and delivering trainings, which covered not only conservation issues but also managerial and entrepreneurial themes."
Narindra Tsilavina Ratovonirina
Madagascar Project Assistant
Narindra joined Durrell in 2022 as a project assistant for the Darwin initiative funded project. Based in Antananarivo, he will assist Felana (project coordinator) and Hanitra in the development of the project aimed at capacity building and exchange visits for protected area managers with his experiences gained while working in the Lafa Forum project within Wild Conservation Society (WCS)."
Luke Brannon
Mountain Chicken Recovery Programme Coordinator
Luke has a varied conservation history working as a Zoo Keeper for 6 years as a ZSL Whipnade and with multiple conservation organisations (rehabilitation or release) and species including Moon and Sun bears and Western Chimpanzees. He is graduate of our DESMAN 2016 graduate certificate course and in 2017 represented ZSL on the Dominican Mountain Chicken Frog Project. He has now continued his work with this species for Durrell implementing our strategy for the species on the island of Montserrat. His role includes helping to bring people and nature together, and support the battle against chytridiomycosis, a deadly fungus that’s devastating amphibian populations across the globe.
-