My New Placement- Wildlife Heritage Foundation

As you may have guessed if you follow me on instagram (@erinkaywilliams), I have been working with some big and small cats at the Wildlife Heritage Foundation, my last placement on my placement year.

I have been so crazy busy that sadly I havent been able to blog about the things I have been upto but I thought I could give you a quick update about my placement and what I am actually doing here.

Firstly the WHF is a charity with the site owned by Pete Sampson, the owner of Paradise Wildlife Park and was set up with the idea to help prevent the extinction of big and small cat species. The charity are involved heavily with the international and european breeding programs as well as giving cats that are without a home somewhere to live. They offer educational experiences for guests to raise money for the charity along with raising awarenesss of species that many people may not know exist.

The reason that you may never heard of the WHF though is because it is only open to the public 4 days a year. This year that is 16th July-19th July. So it really is Kent's best kept secret.

Fishing Cat

So, as for me, I have been mainly working with the keeping team here at the WHF. This imvolves cleaning out and feeding of the cats, very similar to what I was doing at Chester Zoo. Unlikely Chester Zoo though, there is more time for enrichment and training for the animals, as well as a lot more time spent with the animals too which is incredible. There has yet to be a day where I havent learnt something new, whether that how to be a hand feed a tiger like today, or just a big cat fact (did you know clouded leopards patterning is very like a snake?).

Serval

Everday here is challanging and interesting. Today I did my first tour and hand feed which was a little scary but so rewarding. Being able to educate people on all the cat species that we have on site as well as tell them about the problems that the species face is brilliant. Showing people species that they have never heard of before is also a really nice thing to do.

Jungle Cat

Is this type of job for everyone? No, probably not but making sure that people from all over the country can go away after a visit appreciating just how incredible cats, big and small are is definitely something that I can enjoy.

Have you ever worked with big cats? What are your favourite? Get in touch!!

Love