Bob Lawrence, Director of Wildlife at West Midland Safari Park

(Bob won the National Learning Works Award during Adult Learners’ Week 2008)

Learning comes in many shapes and forms, and if you presume to know it all you do so at your peril; working with wild animals will teach you that if nothing else!

Opportunities to learn more at West Midland Safari Park come in many guises. A simple drive amongst many of the world’s most critically endangered animals is a learning experience in itself,
but the end of the four-mile Safari Trail isn’t the end of the road for educational opportunities for staff and colleagues, both in the UK and abroad.

The Conservation Hut for example provides an insight into activities at our ‘sister’ reserve and its associated research centre in the Ongava Game Reserve, Namibia.
The Parks Education Department provides a range of learning opportunities in keeping with the National Curriculum and its ‘Outreach’ programme, taking the conservation message out to local schools.

As a ‘centre of excellence’ we provide a wide range of skills to outside agencies. We work closely with the National Parks ‘Ranger Service’ as we do with The Wildlife Trust and Natural England as part of the United Kingdom’s habitat conservation programmes.
Further afield, we support the World Land Trust and their work in restoring the Atlantic rainforest in Brazil, their efforts to reintroduce the Philippine Spotted deer in the Philippines and the reintroduction into Namibia’s Etosha National Park of the African hunting dog.

Really exciting and rewarding work, but we can only help achieve all this if we fund staff to take foundation and degree level education to support and continue these and many other national and international conversation activities. But we all continue to learn……..

Find out more about the West Midland Safari Park at www.wmsp.co.uk