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Careers in Zoo Education >> Conservation
Biologist
 Conservation Biologist
Ecological Monitoring Coordinator,
West Central Africa, WCS
 "Wildlife
conservation is enormously rewarding. You are constantly amazed
and delighted by what you see - it might be an eagle feeding its
young high in a tree, it might be ants carrying termites home
from a hunting expedition, it might be an orchid flower shaped
like a bee. Every day there is something that makes you gasp.
And, underlying all this amazement and curiosity is the knowledge
that you can do something about saving these things."
As a child, Boo was always out and about looking at bugs, birds, and animals in the countryside behind where she lived. She always enjoyed animals, especially the horses she would ride. By the time Boo was about seven, she knew she wanted to work with animals. Then, at some point in high school, she realized wildlife was in danger. After reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and George Schaller's early books, she decided she wanted to work to save wildlife, probably in Africa.
Boo studied biology and geography in high school. After she graduated, she went to college, where she concentrated on the wildlife side of biology, joined the biology club, and participated in university expeditions to the tropics. She eventually earned a Ph.D. and started working in Africa. First, Boo worked in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo. She now lives and works in Lopé National Park in Gabon.
As a conservationist, she looks at the relationships between human actions and wildlife and plant communities. She also looks at the way that wild animal and plant communities interact in the absence of humans. This research helps her predict the effect humans will have on wildlife, and the kinds of things we can do to ensure that the maximum number of wild species and ecosystems remain wild and undamaged.
Living in a very wild and untouched place, Boo knows that she is making a difference. The things she sees around her every day—monkeys, elephants, amazing birds—are surviving because of the work she does.
Visit the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) 's Work on the Wild Side for more information about wildlife-friendly careers. Work on the Wild Side is part of WCS's Teens for Planet Earth website.
Text and images on this page are copyright 2005 © Wildlife Conservation Society. |
