Jobs you might get today, and those you might get in the future are constantly changing.  This chapter will provide some insights - but don’t consider anything you discover here or elsewhere as being set in stone for your entire career.
There are however some things that are unlikely to change throughout your entire career, and those things are

• People will always keep pets
• People will always use products derived from animals
• People will always seek to manage wild animals
• People will always have a desire or need to observe animals
  
  

The ways in which people do these things, the animals they are involved with, and the jobs associated with are different today to what they were in the past; and are likely to be even more different into the future.

Jobs with Animals are diverse, and can include:

• Pet Industries
• Farming
• Sport: racing dogs, horses, camels, showing
• Captive wildlife management
• Free wildlife management
• Animal health  
• General:  writing, photography, tourism, pest control, etc
  
  

Captive Wildlife Work
Wildlife parks and zoos employ people at a range of levels and also in management roles. A small enterprise may only have one manager; but large enterprises can employ many staff in a series of departments. To manage such an organisation can require a CEO as well as department heads and lower level supervisory staff to head a series of small teams. Job titles vary from place to place and time to time (e.g. Curator, Director, Superintendent, Supervisor, Foreman, Team leader); but the essence of each of these jobs is the same: to manage the physical, human and animal resources which they are in charge of.

Working with Non Captive Wildlife
There are potential implications for humans if free wildlife is not properly managed. That fact alone provides a significant reason for the creation of jobs and subsequent work in this field. Although the importance of wild populations of animals is better understood today than ever before - it is still limited.  Populations of many species in the wild are under threat, due to the activity of man.  The world is one large ecosystem, with complex interactions and important co-dependent relationships between different species of plants and animals. When the population of one species diminishes or increases (or worse becomes extinct), there are implications that flow on to other species and potentially back to humans

Want to know more about working with wildife?

See our ebook on working with animals -click for more details