Finishing my Placement at the Wildlife Heritage Foundation

Last week I finished my last placement for my placement year which was at the Wildlife Heritage Foundation in Kent. It is crazy how quickly my 9 months of placements have flown by but this last placement was certainly the quickest.

My time at WHF was brilliant and part of me wishes I was still down there now. From getting to educate people about all the cats on site with the guest experiences to looking after the cats and food prep the whole 3 months was incredible. Getting the opportunity to train a cheetah and also do a talk about white lions to over 100 people are experiences that I can not forget and the team there really did make my time so incredible.

Leaving my final placement I still have no intention of becoming a zoo keeper. What this placement taught me though, is everything is better when you are working with the species you really admire and respect. My other two placements, although I was with animals that are rare and beautiful my passion lay with cats and until this placement I didn't realise just how important that part was.

Photo Courtesy of Peter Kertesz

All photos permitted by Wildlife Heritage Foundation

In the last few weeks of my placement I got to watch a dental day where the white tiger Narnia was having a canine sorted. I also got to help catch and medicate a Pallas cat before seeing her off on her way to Germany. These two experiences were just a few of the incredible opportunities I was given during my time at WHF and to say I feel privileged for those opportunity is an understatement.

My last weekend at WHF saw the open days where the site is open to the public for only 4 days a year. This is the main fundraiser for the site and the amount of weeding and enclosure maintenance than happened the week before makes me finger tips hurt in memory, but, it was amazing. Seeing how many people were interested in the projects and the conservation of the cats was lovely. Some people even travelled down to attend all four days as they love the site so much. All of the volunteers helped when they could and it really was lovely to see everyone work together.

I don't think I will ever have the opportunity to fall asleep to the sounds of Lions roaring again or have a fishing cat watch me as I head out on a run with curiosity.

So to all of the team there, THANK YOU. You are all amazing and without you and all your hard work, WHF would not be anywhere near as successful.

Find out more about the WHF for experiences or volunteering here and feel free to email me if you want to ask some questions about my experience before hand at erinkaywilliams1993@gmail.com

Are you interested in placements? What are your favourite animals?

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