Céad míle fáilte (a hundred thousand welcomes) PDX Wildlife followers! My name is Doireann Ferris, I’m from Ireland, hence the strange name, it’s actually pronounced like “Derrin”. I am in the final year of my Zoology degree in University College Cork.
I grew up in the countryside in Wexford surrounded by farms, which is where my love for animals first came from. My love of Giant Pandas also began at a very young age. In my first year of primary (elementary) school there was a reading book which followed the tails of a panda called Patsy Panda and that was it, the Giant Panda obsession began.
During secondary (high) school I travelled to Nepal for a summer to volunteer in an orphanage in Kathmandu. I acted as a teacher and carer. The children there had a lot of difficulty saying Doireann, so they simply called me “Panda Miss”…I must have been talking about pandas more than I realised.
After I completed my final secondary school exams I travelled to China to volunteer at Bifengxia Panda Reserve. I spent 1 month as a Panda Keeper Assistant, preparing food, feeding the pandas, cleaning enclosures, and sweeping up a lot of poop, I loved every second of it! This amazing experience made me sure that this is what I want to do with my life. I can’t wait to go back to the Panda base to help carry out such important research with PDX Wildlife.
Doireann with a panda at Bifengxia during her panda keeper experience
When I arrived home I started university. I was nominated to study abroad, so I spent my 3rd year studying Life Science in the National University of Singapore. There I met very interesting people from all over the world and made lifelong friends. I had the opportunity to study an entirely different range of animals and of course I dragged my new friends along to see the 2 Giant Pandas in Singapore.
During university I mostly enjoyed learning about conservation and animal behaviour. As part of my final year I wrote a thesis on the behaviour of meerkats and primates in mixed species enclosures. I spent months in Fota Wildlife Park in Cork collecting animal behaviour data. I have just 3 exams left until I complete my zoology honours bachelor degree. I’m so excited to work with Giant Pandas again and to start the summer internship with PDX Wildlife!
-Doireann