Selected Careers in Conservation

VulPro - General assistant, Operations Manager

Obert Gayesi Phiri - South Africa

My name is Obert. My job is managing the centre at VulPro. Vulpro is a Vulture Conservation charity based near Pretoria in South Africa. We take care of vultures that have been injured or poisoned, we treat them, care for them and release them back into the wild when they are fit. We also do research on vultures, and education to make people more aware of how special vultures are and how we can protect them.

I started at Vulpro in 2007. I started as a temporary, general employee, a job that involved gardening and feeding the vultures and eagles. I also was involved in cleaning and maintaining the enclosures and assisting with any bird treatments.

I was promoted to Operations Manager, and now my job is to manage the entire Centre. I make sure we provide the correct housing and meet the nutritional needs of all our residents – that is the vultures and large birds of prey. This involves regular check-ups of the birds throughout the day, daily enclosure checks, and feeding and providing clean water to all enclosures and birds. I assist with rehabiltition, treatment, as well as post and pre-op needs of our rehab cases. These are birds that have come to us because they were injured or poisoned in the wild. We provide veterinary care and a sanctuary.

I am also in charge of all tours throughout the centre and for volunteers working at the centre. Basically, anything and everything to do with the management, housing, care of the vultures both, releasable and non-releasable residents and all that is involved in their day to day care and management.

I also work side by side with the director on the captive breeding programme and take over management when she is unavailable or she is in the field. This involves taking care of incubation of eggs, hatching, hand-rearing and monitoring of the captive breeding population of birds at VulPro.

What I like about my job is helping to save the birds. I like learning more about the birds each day as there is always