A lifelong love for Mother Nature

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This article was published 27/11/2017 (3033 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Grant Furniss’s career in wildlife and animal conservation and management has taken him all over the world.

He worked in the bush in his homeland of South Africa. He spent 12 years in the United Arab Emirates, managing and caring for the president’s private collection — some 58,000 animals from 26 species. And then there were the nine months in Belgium, doing artificial insemination on cranes.

His career has brought him to Winnipeg, where he’ll be the new senior director of animal care and conservation at Assiniboine Park Zoo.

“For any zoo professional, being the director of an accredited zoo, like Assiniboine Park, that’s the pinnacle of your career,” Furniss said. “There’s a lot we can do here. There’s a lot I can already see that I can bring to the zoo. It makes me really excited.”

Furniss would like to see the older exhibits at the zoo be renovated.

“That would be a huge step forward,” he said. “You’ve got this iconic exhibit, Journey to Churchill, and surrounding it are exhibits that need help.”

He’d also like to bring other charismatic species to the zoo.

“River otters is the first that jumps to mind,” he said. “Our meerkat exhibit is very sad, and it doesn’t need to be. Meerkats, river otters — they’re animals who like being in a zoo. They don’t have to watch for predators and they’re busy all the time.”

Furniss, 42, was born in Johannesburg. His interest in animals goes back to childhood.

Furniss’s dad used to take him and his brother on twice-yearly visits to the Kruger National Park in northeastern South Africa, which he said “was a highlight.”

Furniss studied wildlife management and nature conservation.

“And went straight into the bush from there,” he said.

That’s where he met his wife, Angie.

“She’s also an animal person,” Furniss said. “We actually worked together for a good 15 years.”

Angie used to hand-rear young animals that were abandoned in the bush.

“We’ve had amazing things in our house,” Furniss said with a laugh. “Lion cubs, baby elephants, baby rhinos. We’ve had it all. It’s quite amazing. There’s lots of good photographs.”

Furniss and his wife, along with their two children — a son, who is 10, and a daughter, who is nine — moved to North America after he was appointed the animal care operations manager at the Calgary Zoo, a position that was created for him based on his unique skill-set. He was in Calgary for 2½ years before coming to Winnipeg.

And even though he’s worked with practically every animal you can name — and probably many you can’t — Assiniboine Park Zoo gives him a chance to work with animals he hasn’t before.

“Polar bears are quite new,” he said. “You can’t have polar bears in the places I’ve worked in. They’ll be a huge eye-opener for me. The last time I would have seen a polar bear was probably when I was six or seven years old — and that was a very lonely one in Johannesburg, which isn’t allowed anymore. Thank goodness.”

For Furniss, a modern zoo focuses on conservation.

“Research is great, but conservation is what zoos have to do. And walk the talk: don’t just say, ‘We are a conservation organization.’ Are you? What are you doing for conservation? The polar bears is a big one here, so are the burrowing owls,” he said, referring to the work done at the Leatherdale International Polar Bear Conservation Centre and through the Manitoba burrowing owl recovery program.

“It’s identifying those species that zoos can help, and trying to do it locally as well. That’s where a lot of zoos and conservation organizations go wrong; they tend to focus on species which are in trouble and put a lot of investment into a species that can’t be saved.”

While zoos should be engaging, they can’t exist solely for entertainment.

“Look at circuses,” he said. “If zoos don’t get engaged in conservation programs, they will go exactly the same way as all those circuses.”

Updated exhibits that prioritize animal welfare also go a long way in changing people’s minds about zoos.

“It’s about giving people the perception that a zoo is not a prison for animals,” he said. “It’s making it more open, giving the animals as much space as you possibly can — so that plays to the animal welfare side of things,” he said. To that end, Furniss said, Journey to Churchill is one of the best exhibits he’s seen. Less impressive is the snow leopard enclosure.

“That’s not a modern zoo,” he said. “That’s horrific. It should be totally different, and it can be. It’s not going to take much to change it. Just by putting in more space, more viewing — it really changes people’s minds. And that’s what modern zoos have to do.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @JenZoratti