Amanda De George chats to Amber Harrison at Symbio

Ever heard of the critically endangered, native Grassland Earless Dragon? You probably haven’t, but Reptile Keeper Amber Harrison wants to change that. She’s a ball of energy and information and is passionate about conservation. And she likes snakes, especially Symbio’s Burmese Python ‘Squeeze’, who seems equally enamoured with her, slithering up to the glass as Amber peers down at her.

Amber grew up flipping over rocks looking for lizards. She was ‘herping’ (looking for amphibians and reptiles) long before she knew what the word meant. She’d move turtles from the road and scoop up tadpoles, raise them up to frogs before releasing them back into the wild. Like many keepers though, she soon discovered that observing animals in the wild wasn’t quite enough and so she got her reptile licence and her first reptiles, two knob-tailed geckos and a jungle carpet python, at 18.

And that could have been that. While she had wanted to work with animals, Amber had found herself a little dubious about applying for such a competitive industry, saying, “I always had a little bit of self doubt and I didn’t think that I’d be good enough to get into it.” Instead, she went to university, studying for a business degree and almost made the leap into the corporate world –until her final exams.

While others had lined up internships and placements, Amber found that her heart just wasn’t in it. Her passion was with native animals and, it turns out, also with Symbio.

“I was sitting my final exams and I remember looking at Symbio. I had my fourth birthday here. This used to be my favourite place to come as a kid.”

And so she did the scary thing, took a deep breath and applied for a volunteer role. It’s one of those ‘sliding doors’ moments and within weeks the course of her career changed and she donned the keeper khaki and now, 18 months later, she’s a full-time Reptile Keeper.

“It’s so weird to think,” she says, “that I used to raise up frogs and then let them go. And now I get to do that and have meaning behind it. I get to help endangered Australian species.”

But more than that, she’s helping to ensure the future of these species, not only by providing frogs for Chytrid Fungus trials (a fungus affecting global frog populations) with Canberra University, or assisting in breeding programs to help the endangered Green and Golden Bell and Stuttering Frogs, but by fostering passion in the next generation.

“I love seeing little kids who are so excited to learn about reptiles and I get to be that one to instil that passion into them. I can only do so much in my lifetime but if I can inspire others to do what I do, then it gets carried on for the next generation and hopefully we can save these endangered species.”

Open daily 9.30am-5pm | 7-11 Lawrence Hargrave Dr, Helensburgh NSW 2508. Phone (02) 4294 1244 or visit symbiozoo.com.au