Smooze dds4/6/2023 She remained in Belize, taking nationality in 1990, and was still training animals and birds at the zoo until two weeks before her death. Later, when the call came to help out on a wildlife documentary in the newly independent former British colony of Belize, she upped sticks and went to work for the film-makers Richard and Carol Foster, who were to become firm friends. One of its tapirs went on to feature on the country’s banknotes and stamps. Sharon Matola with a tapir, a creature celebrated with an annual party at Belize Zoo. Much travel.” When the ringmaster found out she had studied big cat behaviour, she was given her own act with the tigers. She was looking for an escape from studying mushrooms, and a brief early marriage to a dentist, when she saw an ad: “Girls wanted to dance in Mexican circus. She then studied at New College of Florida, graduating in 1981 with a degree in biology and environmental sciences, with a focus on mycology and animal behaviour. After school, she went into the US airforce, which gave her an early introduction to Latin America when she was sent to Panama for jungle training. Her only luxury was a pool she had dug, which she shared with a small crocodile.īorn in Baltimore, Maryland, Sharon was the second of three children of Janice (nee Schatoff), an executive assistant, and Edward Matola, sales manager for the National Brewing Company. The animals enjoyed much better conditions than Matola, who lived in a modest, small wooden dwelling with an outside toilet. She went on to have a DJ slot on British Forces radio. Matola told me she owed a debt of gratitude to British soldiers posted to Belize for jungle training who helped by digging paths and renovating enclosures at the zoo in their time off. A special party takes place at the zoo every year on 27 April, which is designated National Tapir Day in Belize and World Tapir Day globally. For many visitors, meeting April was the first time they had seen the country’s official national animal. April the tapir, who arrived after hunters had killed her mother, was so popular that she ended up on the country’s banknotes and stamps. Today there are more than 170 animals in the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre, including coatis, ocelots and Harpy eagles. She could pack a cocktail dress and a pair of heels into a knapsack, ride her Kawasaki motorbike to a soiree in the capital, Belmopan, or Belize City, schmooze some donors and be back in time for the night round at the enclosures she individually designed for each animal, many of whom were dumped, injured, at the zoo’s front door. Sharon Matola, from Baltimore, Maryland, settled in Belize when a wildlife film-making project fell apart.
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