Paignton Zoo Environmental Park Educator Katy Barton has Been Awarded a Travelling Fellowship

By Philip Knowling

Paignton, UK - Paignton Zoo Environmental Park educator Katy Barton has been awarded a travelling fellowship from the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust. She is visiting Madagascar and Mozambique, where she will be spending five weeks studying environmental education.

She will spend three weeks in Madagascar and two in Mozambique visiting zoos, sanctuaries, and nature reserves to look at education programmes. Katy said: “I want to find out what sort of wildlife education programmes exist, who they focus on and how effective they are.”

She negotiated a rigorous application process and beat off challenges from numerous other applicants to claim the £6,000 grant. Fewer than one hundred fellowships are awarded each year.

“The recent political upheaval in Madagascar has hit wildlife hard. Some national parks have shut their gates to visitors altogether in an attempt to control poaching and illegal logging. The unrest could undo all the good work that’s been done there in the past few years.

“Madagascar has unique wildlife - the opportunity to see lemurs in the wild is fantastic. It’s a trip I’d not otherwise be able to do. I want to compare Madagascar - a country with a reasonable amount of tourism, well-developed opportunities to view wildlife and a significant amount of support from overseas conservation organisations - with Mozambique, a country that has a relatively poor wildlife-related tourism infrastructure, especially away from the coast.”

Katy, from Efford in Plymouth, has visited African countries such as Tanzania and Ghana, but the fellowship is her first chance to see Madagascar and Mozambique. She has always had an interest in wildlife education. “I became an education volunteer at London Zoo aged 16. I taught science in secondary schools and worked for the RSPB before moving into zoo education.”

She hopes to gain a lot from the trip. “It will increase my knowledge of habitats and species and improve my teaching here in the Zoo. I will be able to forge links with people working in conservation education and hopefully pave the way for a Paignton Zoo project working with amphibians on Madagascar.”

“This is a fantastic chance not only to explore a part of the world I have never seen but also to learn about the wildlife education that is carried out there. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime for someone with a passion for animals and education.

“I’m looking forward to meeting people from very different places but who have similar interests. And I really hope I get to see baby lemurs!”

Paignton Zoo Environmental Park is a registered charity. For more information go to www.paigntonzoo.org.uk or ring (01803) 697500.

To view Paignton Zoo's web page on Zoo and Aquarium Visitor, go to:  http://www.zandavisitor.com/forumtopicdetail-783-Paignton_Zoo_Environmental_Park