Conservation Training Prospectus 2013
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Conservation Training Prospectus 2013 Welcome from our Honorary Director, Dr Lee Durrell Thus the Trust would become a form of university…where people can get the correct training...and then take their talents back to form conservation units throughout the world. Gerald Durrell, 1976, The Stationary Ark Our founder, Gerald Durrell believed that saving species from extinction was as much art as science. One of his greatest ambitions was to establish a training programme which would unite these two disciplines and provide conservationists worldwide with the skills they need to prevent further loss of life on earth. It was a dream come true when, one summer’s evening in the early 1980s, he played croquet on the lawn with ten students from ten different countries at our Durrell and other leading conservation experts headquarters in Jersey. providing advice, contacts and funding opportunities to help you develop your Initially we focused our international conservation career and your impact on training programme on developing captive the conservation world. breeding skills for threatened species. Over time it has grown to provide the We take great pride in the achievements cross-disciplinary understanding required of our graduates, many of whom have to restore species into an increasingly become leaders in their fields, making complex wild landscape. significant contributions to the survival and viability of biodiversity in their own countries. In 2012 we renamed our International Training Centre to Durrell Conservation We have come a long way since Academy to better reflect our professional Gerald Durrell first had the vision to build conservation training focus. By attending conservation units worldwide. Through one of our training courses you will learn Durrell Conservation Academy we hope to directly from some of the world’s leading realise this vision bringing Durrell’s unique conservation practitioners the art as well as approach to conservation to some of the the science of species conservation. conservation leaders of the future. On completion you will be enrolled into our graduate network, which to date has seen more than 3350 individuals from 135 countries join its ranks. Through this you will Dr Lee Durrell MBE be connected to your peers, Durrell staff Honorary Director, Durrell 2 Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust – saving species worldwide More than 10% of the species saved from extinction worldwide are Durrell project species * Orange-tailed skink (Gongylomorphus fontenayi), saved from extinction by island translocation work by Durrell staff in 2010 Durrell’s mission is saving species from bred pygmy hogs back into the wild in extinction. We achieve this through Assam, captive-bred lesser night geckos conservation breeding programmes, back to Mauritius, and carried out a trial restoring species in their native habitats translocation of mangrove finches in the and training others to do the same. For 50 Galapagos Islands. In Madagascar we are years, Durrell has championed and led building on our 25 years of conservation the conservation of species most highly work to save many of the country’s iconic threatened with extinction. species such as the ploughshare tortoise and the Madagascar pochard, arguably Currently we have 45 projects running in the rarest bird in the world and which was 14 countries involving over 50 dedicated until recently thought to be extinct. field staff. Our overseas conservation work has resulted in 11 species being saved in * A major paper published in Science lists 63 Mauritius including the pink pigeon and species as having become less threatened the Rodrigues fruit bat. We are working with extinction as a result of conservation in the Caribbean to save the Montserrat efforts. 11% of these were Durrell projects, mountain chicken and several threatened which clearly demonstrates the impact of species of iguana. In just the last two years, our work. See Hoffmann et al. (2010). we have successfully released captive- 3 Durrell Conservation Academy We know how to save species from extinction. This positivity permeates throughout the training programme and provides both inspiration and direction to course participants and lecturers alike. Jamie Copsey, Head of Training, Durrell Through Durrell Conservation Academy we’re able to put you in direct contact with the world’s leading experts in species conservation, many of which are managing our own recovery programmes, both overseas and on-site at our wildlife park in Jersey. Such work involves a wide variety of biological skills, such as population monitoring, invasive species management, intensive species management techniques, infectious disease management and habitat restoration. It also involves a suite We value each participant that attends of cross-disciplinary skills, from facilitation, our courses, be they experts in their own conflict resolution and community-based right or amateur naturalists looking to conservation techniques through to broaden their understanding of the natural project management and leadership. world. We invest heavily in providing the We have been able to draw upon all of time each participant needs to help their these skills to create a diverse range of understanding of complex conservation conservation training courses through issues or theories. Participants on our Durrell Conservation Academy. courses are encouraged to share and challenge each other to help them By attending a training course at Durrell shape their views and approaches to you will start a relationship that will stay conservation. with you throughout your personal and professional life. Many Durrell alumni return We welcome you to Durrell Conservation for further training or work with us to take Academy and hope that you too become training courses to their part of the world. For infused with the belief that we can together some we are able to offer internships within save more species from extinction. Durrell Wildlife Park or with our overseas conservation programmes. For all we provide support through the Durrell Conservation Learning Network encouraging the exchange of ideas, issues and solutions; providing access to the latest information; and making seed grants available to help kick-start conservation projects. 4 Contents Page Topic 6 Partners in conservation training 7 Key Durrell and visiting lecturers 10 Accommodation 11 Facilities 12 Jersey 13 Worldwide training locations 14 Courses 15 Course overview 16 Durrell endangered species management graduate certificate 17 Facilitation and communication skills 18 An introduction to GIS for conservation managers 19 The beauty of birds 20 Graduate profile: Dr Ian Singleton 22 Amphibian conservation husbandry 23 Endangered species recovery 24 Conservation breeding and husbandry of birds 25 Leadership and project management skills 26 Graduate profile: Carolina Falla 28 Conservation education and interpretation 29 Managing infectious disease in conservation programmes 30 Conservation breeding and husbandry of callitrichids and lemurs 31 Integrated species conservation and management 32 Graduate profile: Ramesh Chand 34 Avian egg incubation workshop 35 Postgraduate diploma in endangered species recovery 36 New courses for 2013 38 Further and higher education 39 Durrell conservation learning network 5 Partners in conservation training I have been promoted twice since I came back from Jersey. I am in the management cadre now – my interaction with my staff is fantastic thanks to the training I received at Durrell. DESMAN course participant, 2004 We believe in providing the highest quality training possible. With many of our courses this involves drawing on Durrell expertise in endangered species recovery. For some we partner with other international experts, such as those within specialist groups of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). We often collaborate with specialist organisations, such as LandCare Research and Island Conservation, both of which focus on the management of invasive species. We work with in country NGOs including the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation (MWF), Mauritius and Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (IPE), Brazil both to provide Conservation Science, in partnership with courses overseas and to bring people to Kew Gardens and the Zoological Society of Jersey to attend our courses. We also have London. very strong relationships with a number of UK universities including the University We collaborate with a wide variety of of Reading, the University of Kent and national conservation organisations in the Nottingham Trent University. design and delivery of our training courses worldwide (see below for examples). We Increasingly we are securing accreditation are always looking for new partnerships that for our training courses, providing impartial enable us to extend the range of training recognition of the quality of the training we can offer in support of endangered provided. Our Durrell Endangered Species species conservation. Management Graduate Certificate course (DESMAN) is accredited through the University of Kent, as is our new Post Graduate Diploma course in Endangered Species Recovery to be embedded uniquely within our conservation programme in Mauritius. With Imperial College London we deliver a Masters in 6 Key Durrell and visiting lecturers A small selection of the Durrell staff and many visiting experts involved in delivering our conservation training courses… Jamie Copsey Professor John Fa Jamie is Head of Training John is Durrell’s Chief at Durrell.