Colchester Zoo’s charity Action for the Wild supports VulPro, a vulture conservation programme in South Africa working to put Africa’s vultures first.

Kat Smith, one of our keepers at Colchester Zoo, volunteered at Vulpro in May 2015 and has since gone on to help with their October 2015 Vulture Conservation Project seminar!

The team at VulPro are extremely grateful for the support of which Action for the Wild gives to the project and were thankful for the donations from Colchester Zoo and its staff which will aid VulPro in continuing to safeguard the population of vultures in South Africa.

Keeper Kat reported on her experience at the VulPro conference, here’s what she had to say;

“I was fortunate enough to spend a month volunteering with the project in May where I had the opportunity to take part in vital conservation projects that made me feel as though I was really making a difference to vulture populations. Following this experience I decided to attend the annual VulPro seminar in October 2015. This enhanced my knowledge on what it takes to conserve Africa’s vultures and I was honoured to be given the responsibility of taking the minutes. At first I was apprehensive about undertaking this important task as over the 3 days, there were many important decisions and discussions that took place between collaborators. However, I thoroughly enjoyed being a part of VulPro’s mission to work towards a common goal which all vulture species will benefit from.

Over the course of the seminar, I was pleased to be involved and to share my knowledge with others who have a combined and specialist interest in helping to conserve vultures. From this experience, I have come to realise that saving Africa’s vultures is not easy and that key individuals and organisations working together is a vital part of the puzzle for vulture conservation.

As a zoo keeper at Colchester Zoo, I hope I can pass on this knowledge of vulture conservation to others and help them to understand why vultures are so important to our ecosystem.”

For more information on VulPro and to find out how you can help click here.