Durrell Diaries: Keeping our teams around the world as safe as can be

Durrell's Head of Global Safety, Risk and Safeguarding, Amber Dyson, discusses some of the work she undertakes with different teams around the world.

My role at Durrell is Global Head of Safety, Risk and Safeguarding. I imagine you picture someone in a high-vis jacket and a hard hat, shuffling papers on a clipboard and panicking over somebody tripping over their laptop cable. Maybe that is what you’d expect at a typical workplace, but thankfully for me (and you, as the reader), Durrell is far from a normal place to work.  

I am lucky to split my time between Durrell’s activities in Jersey, the UK, and the rest of the world. I have a varied role that can see me delivering training, writing a new policy, and investigating an incident all in the same week. So today I’ll take you on a journey through three of my favourite days at Durrell in the last few months. Sit back, relax, and don’t forget your factor 50… 

Picture swaying palm trees, clear blue waters and sandy beaches. Are we on holiday? No! We’re in Mauritius for Durrell’s health and safety training week. Here, we delivered training to a team of conservationists who routinely work on Round Island and other offshore islets. The team spend a lot of time travelling on boats, so Durrell collaborated with the Mauritian Coastguard to provide man overboard training for the first time. Participants from Durrell and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation learned how to raise the alarm using radio and satellite phone, practiced throwing life rings to teammates stranded at sea, and mastered the art of swimming one-handed whilst supporting a casualty in the water. The training was a huge success and will now be delivered annually.   

Our next stop is just a short hop across the sea to Madagascar. A lot of Durrell’s work relies on community participation to achieve conservation success. Working with people brings both rewards and challenges, so it is important that Durrell and our partners build trust with local communities and provide them with safe and accessible ways to raise any concerns they may have about the programmes we are implementing. After working alongside other organisations to develop a safeguarding awareness briefing, we visited local communities in Northern Madagascar to deliver it. We also held a series of focus groups to understand what different means of communication work best for men, women, and youth. The communities were incredibly generous with their time and pleased that Durrell cared about their wellbeing just as much as our conservation objectives.  

Our final stop is Montserrat in the Caribbean. Here, we delivered first aid training to the Durrell team and staff from the National Trust and Department of Environment. Despite some participants undertaking fieldwork for over 20 years, this was the first time many of them had done a first aid course. During the two-day course, we covered topics such as CPR, bleeding, fractures and heat-related illness. The course culminated in a major incident scenario involving multiple casualties, fake blood, and lots of questionable amateur dramatics. Providing this training ensured that our teams are well equipped to deal with medical emergencies whilst they scramble over slippery rocks at night, in the depths of the forest, looking for frogs! 

We’ll be looking to recruit a new person for the Safety, Risk and Safeguarding team in the coming months. The role will be based in Jersey but will support all of Durrell’s work and will involve some travel to our field sites around the world. If you’re a safety professional keen to ditch the high-vis and clipboard, keep your eyes on the Durrell website. 

This article was originally printed in the Jersey Evening Post on Friday 28 February.