Yorkshire Wildlife Park's Animal Development Manager Simon Marsh is set to spend two weeks ( leaving the UK on the 6th May) at Painted Dog Conservation as part of the YWP / PDC 'working partnership in progress'. PDC-UK Trustee's would like to wish him 'Good Luck' during his time in Southern Africa.

 Simons says, "I am very much looking forward to the trip and experience first-hand what PDC do in Zimbabwe"

"We were very excited to have won the first ever BIAZA Conservation Award of £5000 with our submission titled 'African Painted Dogs: Building in situ/ex situ links and strategie'. This is the first trip of many with which we can build on knowledge from the wild and share information from captivity and use this flow of experiences to strengthen the conservation of painted dogs wherever they are. Modern zoo management and field conservation work means that the separation between the two are getting narrower. We believe that they should overlap and the links between the two should be made even stronger. With Yorkshire Wildlife Park, Painted Dog Conservation and Wildlife Vets International all working in conjunction with each other it makes for a powerful alliance where we can secure the future of the painted dog."

"The first trip is to collate and share knowledge, to find out how we can work together and  where we can improve. The initial topics will be research, husbandry, welfare, management and education and how each organisation delivers these objectives, where they overlap and where we can improve them".