Wildlife Forensic Academy Continued

After the two-week course, I stayed an additional two weeks at the academy to make up the four-week course. During the four-week course I assisted with veterinary activities, wildlife capture and immobilization, the handling and containment of animals, anti-poaching training as well as information on veterinary pharmacology.

During this training, you get a further understanding of the veterinary role as well as pathology and stress related mortalities. I also got exposure to what the anti-poaching rangers do, as well as weapon handling. This is important to know just in case you were to be in contact with a poacher to make the weapon safe, but also if you need to defend yourself. You can see in these pictures that we learned about firing different types of guns, as well as what they do when you get shot.

During the four-week course, we went on a road trip around South Africa to see the different landscapes within the rural and urban areas to understand different conservation principles. We learned about different protected area systems, socio-economic issues, as well as human-wildlife conflict.

I then stayed an additional two months interning at the local SPCA. Here is where I learned more about human and wildlife conflict. Rehabilitated animals, as well as conducted investigations on two live cases. In total, I conducted 20 post-mortems on different animals and was the lead investigator on a seal skinning incident and a shark finning incident. I even created a basic post-mortem guide to help future academy students.