Meet Steve!

 

My name is Steve Rodgie and I’m 27 years old from the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia. It’s an honour to be accepted for this volunteering internship focusing on the biomechanics of the gliding capabilities of Draco Dussumieri.

Me :)

I have held a strong passion for reptiles my entire life. Growing up in Australia I have always been surrounded by an assortment of beautiful reptiles, particularly agamids such as bearded and water dragons. I have had many different reptiles as pets, and for the past year I have worked at an educational facility called Reptile Kingdom Australia in Gold Coast. My roles there included conducting lizard demonstrations, offering animal 'touch-and-feel' sessions and reptile feeding opportunities to the public, while providing interesting facts about each animal and answering any questions that they may have. I have also helped maintain the high-quality reptile enclosures, running the public wildlife photo sessions and with animal feeding. My work has allowed me to handle all of the 60 plus species at the facility on a regular basis, and take care for, and relocate injured or intrusive individuals that were dropped at the centre. Apart from this I have also been busy catching reptiles in the wild.

The Project

I arrived here at Agumbe Rainforest Research Station with Pranav this morning, Saturday March 4th, and quickly settled in with the friendly staff and other researchers. Pranav has already provided me with a detailed insight to his approach for this study, and exactly what he hopes to achieve through the information we gather in the field. His knowledge and understanding on the subject is clearly comprehensive, and we have access to top-of-the-line equipment to assist us in getting what we need. We also have many helping hands available thanks to the staff at ARRS.

We have the advantage of having the Areca nut plantation, from which we’ll be catching, tagging, tracking and filming the Dracos, situated right next to ARRS. This will make the study considerably easier, as we won’t have to carry our equipment into the rainforest each day. Starting today we will number each tree in the plantation and set the positioning of the cameras so that we’re able to achieve the best camera shots possible for the study. Stay tuned for more updates, coming soon!