My name is Angela Johnson and I have been a zookeeper at the Louisville Zoo in Louisville Kentucky for almost 13 years. I started my career at the zoo as a keeper in the education department.I later became a keeper working with seals, sea lions, otters, polar bears, maned wolves, macropods, birds, and a variety of cats. I am married and I have a two-year-old daughter. I also have four dogs. I am leaving for Churchill Canada on my 12th wedding anniversary.
I am looking forward to PBI Leadership Camp for several reasons. Of course being a zookeeper, I want to see polar bears in their natural environment. I want to see them in their own element without any walls or fences around them. This is such an opportunity. I am honored everyday to care for the animals in our collection. What a privilege to view one of the animals that I use to care for in the environment where it should naturally exist.
During PBI camp I hope to learn skills that will help me do my job better. I hope to learn more about polar bears in general and how the changing climate is affecting the bears. I want to know what can be done to ensure that the polar bear will still be thriving in its natural habitat so that my daughter can see a bear one day. I want her to have the same opportunity as I do, to visit a bear in the wild, not just in a zoo.
I also understand that PBI will teach me leadership skills and presentation skills which will assist me in educating zoo visitors as well as others in my community.
We will be opening a new polar bear exhibit in the near future which needs to be engaging to the public. I will hopefully be a part of that exhibit and I would like to see it function well and be educational and enjoyable too. With the knowledge that I hope to gain from camp, I can help achieve these goals.
I want to be able to convince our zoo guests that a zoo is not the only place they want to be able to see our animals. I want to make them understand why it is important to be able to see these animals in their natural habitat. I want them to understand why someone in Louisville Ky. should care about a polar bear miles away in Canada.
I hope to have enough influence and impact on people when they come to visit the zoo that they will tell their friends, family, and co-workers what they saw and what they learned during their visit. Maybe then their friends, family and co-workers will then come to visit, and so on.
I admit that when I started this job thirteen years ago, I didn’t know what to expect, never having worked with wild animals before (My previous animal experience was mostly with dogs and domestic cats). It was a job to start with, but now I have made it my career. I never imagined that my career choice would take me to Canada to further study what I love to do everyday. I enjoy what I do and the people that I work with and of course the animals that I care for daily.
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