To celebrate International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month the Museum is sharing the stories of 27 inspirational women, alongside the animals they work with the most.

Dr Rebecca Smith

Department of Zoology

“Cape mountain zebras declined to fewer than 80 animals in the 1950s. Following conservation initiatives, by 2000 there were around 1,600 animals, but the subspecies was still listed as Endangered.

To help ensure their long-term survival, I moved to De Hoop Nature Reserve, South Africa to work with CapeNature. The focus of my work was to develop a long-term monitoring and management strategy for Cape mountain zebras. It involved identifying individual zebras using their stripes to determine population size and structure. Also investigating what the zebras ate, when and where, using dung piles, counts along vehicle tracks and by helicopter.”

Find out more about CapeNature activities here and follow them on twitter here.

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