Today’s guest is Dave Salmoni on animals, education, conservation and chat shows.
Dave Salmoni is a Canadian animal trainer, entertainer, host and producer. He has his own production company, Triosphere, which is based in South Africa and specializes in wildlife films. Salmoni has hosted and produced several television documentaries, including: Living with Tigers, Into the Lion's Den and Sharks: Are They Hunting Us? All three documentaries aired on the Discovery Channel. Salmoni has since starred as a host and expert on Discovery and Animal Planet’s shows Animal Face-Off, Rogue Nature, After the Attack, and Into the Pride. He also hosted Expedition Impossible, a Mark Burnett show on ABC. Salmoni is regularly featured on numerous talk shows, including Jimmy Kimmel Live!, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Larry King Now, Conan and Good Morning America.
In this interview, we discuss:
How we can have open and honest discussions on animals to truly start to make a difference. Hunting and land use. The truth about animals on talk shows. How you can help animals being affected by the COVID pandemic. And so on.Here are some key points that I would advise you to concentrate on
Dave made a career from his passions ... if he can, what is stopping you? If there is not a path for you to take to your goals, why not make one instead? Use Dave's journey as inspiration and follow your dreams. Produce content on what you love, show passion for what you are creating, and it will be attractive to others. Start with your why, and the how will take care of itself. Don't try and do everything yourself. You can't be the best at everything. Use the available resources, experts, guides etc that are available to you. Build a network of help and information, so your skills are always evolving and improving, and you should be in relative control. Quality content, with depth and effort will always over-ride sensationalist attention seeking content. Build systems to ensure safety, quality control and produce the content in a controlled environment and get the shots that inspire. COVID has really hurt a lot of animal rescue places, so if you can donate to charities, and dog rescue centres etc. Help those, helping others. You don't need to agree fully with someone to approve of the message - you can disagree on the methods but support others on the overall voice, so people can be made aware of the plight of animals for example. A problem with removing hunting in remote places, is that blocking hunting without actioning an alternative funding method for the local people, who make money from the hunting element, will not work. We need to act on how things are and not how we want them to be, to make a change in conservation and helping change animals being threatened with extinction etc. We need more civilized discussions on these topics, without letting emotions overrule considered thought. You can't expect others to have your ethics and morals, but we need to work together to make things better by ignoring the little differences to help fix on the whole. To someone an animal might be lovely, to another its a pest. We need to see the perspective from the opposite view, to understand and come to a good solution between the two that will work. Animals can be a very emotive topic. Asking open questions and being willing to listen, can help you gain a deeper understanding. Learn to have confidence in your opinions and abilities to say no, and be confident in your choices and not be motivated or pushed by others to overstep the line. Always be yourself. You can never be found to be fake if you are yourself and not playing a character of yourself. Chase your passions. The world is smaller today than it has ever been. Google, research etc, do your homework and find out about what you are into, spend money on it, work on it, take part in it, build interest for you and others.
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