Clipping: opening avenues

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Clipping: opening avenues

Cosmo features sexy Laurentian grad

Posted By Star Staff / Laurentian University

A Laurentian University zoology graduate has caught the eye of Cosmopolitan Magazine as a 'fun, fearless male we love'.

Dave Salmoni has become something of a star and a sought-after expert on wild animals since he graduated from Laurentian 10 years ago.

The arge predators expert is featured, along with Hollywood A-list actors, famous musicians, and football heroes, in Cosmo's February issue, according to a story posted on Laurentian's website.

Salmoni is currently working in southern Africa chronicling his experiences as he camps with a pride of wild lions, the Laurentian story said. He owns Triosphere Productions, an independent television company based in South Africa; with a long-term contract with Discovery Communications, his shows air on Animal Planet and the Discovery Network.

Last fall, he made the talk-show circuit, with prime guest appearances on the Jay Leno and David Letterman talk shows. His expertise was called upon again in December 2007, when national media interviewed him to explain why a tiger would escape from its enclosure at the San Francisco Zoo and kill a man.

Salmoni grew up in Sarnia, Ont., playing football and wrestling. He spent summers with his family on the French River and headed north to Laurentian University for the zoology program. Studying black bear hibernation, he crawled into dens, pulling medicated bears out to be weighed.

He is still in touch with some of his professors, including Frank Mallory, of the biology department – 'I love him to death' – and past instructor Josef Hamr.

'They were the professors [who] always offered attention to anyone who had the energy. That’s why I feel my degree is one of the best in the world'. It’s easy to earn a degree sitting in a class, he says. 'In my world, where you have to be functioning at a high level, those two showed me how to do that'.

Laurentian was a tight-knit community, and Salmoni learned it was important to develop close working relationships with people, as well as with animals, he says. Mallory and Hamr were professors who could work with students all day in the field, and socialize in the evening at dinner.

Nowadays, Salmoni is a celebrity with large web presence, including reams of Facebook pages and entries on YouTube.

In the beginning, his celebrity status and the occasional 'beefcake' photo caused him embarrassment. 'It was a weird transition but it really opened the door for me'.

Salmoni uses his status to further his conservationist work – he pitched ideas around at the Cosmo celebrity party. Always, he is driven to find solutions that work for humans and protect animals.

 

Cosmo is neat because it’s a market I never really expected to be in. [But it is] really flattering. It’s a fairly elite thing to be in, and I admit, it puts a smile on my face'.

He used to struggle to raise awareness, but now, 'because I’ve been on TV, there’s way more avenues open to me – which is great. I love it'.

Still, it is strange to be a conservationist who is paid by an entertainment company, he says.

He tries to keep perspective and then 'it’s easy to stay calm, and stay true to yourself. And there’s nothing to remind me more of that than being face-to-face with a lion'.

Especially if that lion has read Cosmo.