Dave Salmoni

Dave Salmoni is not entirely human. The star of Living with Tigers and Into the Lion's Den has spent so much time in the company of big cats that something of their essence has entered his bio-circuitry. He conveys a sense of being constantly aware, constantly alive within the moment. And when he moves across the room, his 6'3" corner back's frame conveys the kind of authority you can only learn from the likes of a 200 kg lion in his prime."There's a sensitivity about Dave that you only appreciate fully when you see him at work with the cats," comments a colleague. "He's got this amazing feeling for creatures that could rip him apart at any moment. It's not sentimental. It's the realest kind of love you've ever seen."Before Dave became a television celebrity, he was already renowned in animal training circles for his work with individual tigers, jaguars and lions. He has guided some of the most temperamental and dangerous feline personalities in the business through live shows, television commercials, documentaries and feature films.Dave is a far cry from the popular image of the"lion tamer" - the top hatted, spandex clad, whip cracking showman who makes his charges leap through flaming hoops and balance beachballs on their noses. Mention this kind of performance to him and he'll just chuckle. His normal working outfit is shorts and a t-shirt.Shorts versus spandex aside, what sets Dave apart from the showmen of his trade is his academic grounding in and passion for biology. In 1998 he completed the highly-regarded four year biology program at Laurentian University, Ontario. His first experience of working with big, dangerous animals came in his fourth year with a research project on Black Bears for Canada's Ministry of Natural Resources. The bears were raising hell and the project was geared to finding solutions. Solving animal-related problems in a way that works for both human and animal welfare has since been an ongoing theme in Dave's life.On finishing his studies, Dave took a job with the Bowmanville Zoological Park, which is ranked among the world's largest animal training and resources organisations. "They saw the size of me and reckoned I would be good for shovelling a lot of elephant, er, waste," jokes Dave. He found himself apprenticed to Bowmanville's founder, the legendary animal trainer Michael Hackenberger, and while the job did involve a fair amount of shovelling, Dave soon proved to possess an extraordinary talent for training animals of all shapes and sizes.He became head trainer at Bowmanville in March 1999, just six months after he began his apprenticeship. While specialising in big cats, he also became adept with trainees ranging from domestic cats to Arctic wolves.Then, in January 2000, Dave received another life-changing offer. Two of Bowmanville's young Bengal tigers, a male and a female, were on their way to Africa. There they would be habilitated into the bush to start a breeding population of wild tigers that would ensure their species' survival beyond India. Would Dave accompany them, and facilitate their transition into a strange new wilderness?Of course he would. Dave fell in love with the tigers and the project, and was to devote the next four years to them. While he had not been cast as the main character in the documentary film of the project, the camera found him anyway and simply couldn't let go.Living with Tigers riveted television viewers around the globe, and Dave was flooded with offers for further appearances. He had to learn fast how to deal with media controversy, being pursued by opponents of the tiger project and by the Roy Horn incident (in which Dave's shoot-from-the-hip responses to questions on the mauling of the Siegfried & Roy trainer drew considerable crossfire). He was also pursued by fan mail that imparted everything from breathless teenage crushes to suggestions that he would be a worthy contender in a fist-fight.Dave's recent big project, Into the Lion's Den, is a two-hour special for Animal Planet. Here Dave takes his lion communication skills to the limit as he befriends a pride of wild assassins. Fans and detractors alike will be fascinated.Triosphere 2005. This article may be freely quoted or reproduced in part or in full.