Durrell Conservation Academy

Gerald Durrell, founder of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey, the Channel Islands had a vision. He wanted the Trust to become a form of university where people could get a correct training in Animal Conservation, to then take their talents back to conservation units throughout the world. He believed that saving species from extinction was as much an art as a science. One of his greatest ambitions was to create a training centre which would unit these two disciplines and provide conservationists worldwide with the skills they need to prevent species extinction.

Today with 35 years’ experience of conservation training, the Durrell Conservation Academy, linked to the Wildlife park and headquartered in Jersey, the Channel Islands, is recognized as a world leader in conservation capacity development and is operating at the interface between in-situ and ex-situ conservation. The academy’s first course was run in 1978 and up until now the academy has been able to train 3,500 students from over 135 countries, who have learnt from some of the world’s leading conservation practitioners. The academy’s expertise combined with other leading conservation organisation partnerships creates a diverse range of training courses for all conservation practitioners and enthusiasts.