Meet Eric Brittingham | President & Presenter – Wildlife On The Move

We had the good fortune of connecting with Eric Brittingham and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Eric, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
The thought process behind starting my own business was sparked and inspired by under-funded school budgets that negatively impacted the ability for students to embark on beneficial, experience based field trips and the desire to share my passion for animals, nature, and science with others in an entertaining and educational way. So, in 2005 with the help from my long-time professional mentor and friend K.C. Rudy (now President and Presenter Emeritus), we created and launched Wildlife On The Move in order to “Bring Science to Life” to those that could not afford to take field trips offsite due to budgetary constraints and began bringing the field trip to them. Wildlife On the Move has been providing LIVE and now VIRTUAL Animal Presentations to schools (public, private, home school), daycares, libraries, festivals, churches, scouts, corporate events, birthday parties, celebrations, and television for over 16 years.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
“Bringing Science to Life” with and through Wildlife On The Move Animal Programming is a passion and a mission that I am blessed and honored to have been entrusted with and just a dream career for me! Life is certainly a journey and finally reaching the summit of providing LIVE and VIRTUAL Animal Presentations throughout Texas and beyond as my full-time job is tremendously rewarding and a gift that ultimately came true due to rich immersive childhood experiences, taking risks, trying new and challenging full-time day jobs to pursue the passion part-time, volunteering along the way, as well as meeting and working with great influencers, mentors, friends, and colleagues.

My current dream career has been realized through 29 years of diverse and interesting experiences along the way and it is not just about the “glitz and glamour” of entertaining and educating audiences with LIVE Presentations which I absolutely love and cherish for sure. What is often missed and overlooked is the countless hours of Animal Care I put into our mission – feeding, cleaning, constructing / maintaining enclosures and caring for our 50 Animal Ambassadors that are discarded, rescued, abandoned, and abused pets and wildlife, all while coordinating and supervising the Volunteer Wildlife Wrangler Program as well. Beyond the 20-25+ hours spent just with the Animal Care Component each and every week, I am also heavily involved in managing the administrative side of our non-profit organization for another 30-35+ hours each week Monday through Saturday – booking programs and events, traveling and presenting at events, marketing our programming, keeping up with social media and email communications, purchasing supplies and equipment, procuring and picking up produce, crickets, rodents, and now even developing, creating, and editing video content for our Animal Adventures with Wildlife On The Move Series on Patreon and an Upcoming Vlog Series in partnership with On Air Media – Let’s GO WILD with Wildlife On The Move to premier on our You Tube Channel by September 2021 with the hope of launching it onto any and all interested TV or Media Platforms.

No, it hasn’t always been easy to juggle a full time day job working at Ford Credit or Elevate Credit for over 10 years just to pursue my passion on the side in a part-time way to hopefully make it a full-time gig by using vacation time, holiday time, and weekends to continue on this career path, but has it been worth it? I would say absolutely, yes because all of those stops along the way in finance, working with Mansfield ISD, Arlington ISD, the River Legacy Living Science Center, the Dallas Zoo, and Animal Edutainment have more than prepared me for all that I have experienced and put into Wildlife On The Move for the last 13 Years and certainly over the last 3 Years as Wildlife On The Move has finally become my Full-Time Gig. There have certainly been a lot of challenges along the journey that have been met with patience, flexibility, and perseverance, but none have been as daunting as the Covid-19 situation that we all have faced over the last 2 years and this global pandemic directly threatened the stability and future of Wildlife On The Move back in March of 2019 in a monumental way. Wildlife On The Move’s Animal Care Fund and Educational Programming relies heavily on our LIVE Animal Presentations (especially in June-August during Summer Reading Program Events at Public Libraries) and partly on monetary donations via fundraising efforts throughout the year. As we were rounding the corner of Spring 2019 with over 70 programs already booked for the summer ahead, we were met with the ultimate challenge – with social distancing, mask wearing, and orders to not gather publicly, will we be able to present our LIVE Animals at all the venues we were scheduled to be at or will they start contacting us and canceling those appearances – will our animals survive – will we even have enough funding to stay afloat and survive all of this? The answer to all of these questions was a resounding yes, we will! Just as in the beginning when we founded Wildlife On The Move, there was a problem with school field trip funding we saw that need coming and we developed a solution to solve it, the same proved true with this monumental hurdle and challenge we faced – we needed to keep as many of our Summer Library Program bookings in tact in order to keep animals alive and support our educational programming into the future, so we punted and pivoted right away to start creating our GOIN’ WILD VideoVentures – a Virtual Video Series featuring “Amazing Adaptations” and “Boas vs. Pythons”. This proved to be the best strategic move we made during the pandemic, instead of receiving an influx of cancellations and devastating our overall budget, we were able to retain 70% of our booked programs via the NEW VideoVentures, ZOOM and Facebook LIVE Presentations, and some LIVE Appearances to Video for our Library and Camp Clients upon request. The lessons I have learned on this journey is to always remain organized, prepared, flexible, professional and willing to take risks and create solutions out of opportunities instead of remaining stuck in a rut or married to the norm. Beyond these valuable lessons learned, I believe we have continued to set ourselves apart from others through our unique educational and entertaining content, plus our creativity, consistency, and professional relationships that have been built and retained for over 16 years through personal touches like thank you notes, client feedback, and special discounts. I am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given through Wildlife On The Move and we look forward to “Bringing Science to Life” to a wider audience via the multitude of channels we have now created out of need, necessity, and challenges faced and we would certainly appreciate your help in becoming a “WILD CHILD” by supporting our Animal Care Fund and spreading our message and mission to all you know and please “GO WILD” with us by booking our LIVE or VIRTUAL Animal Programming.

“We Only Fear What We Don’t Understand. The More You Read and Experience, The More You Understand and The Less You Fear, The More Difference You Can Make In The World.” – Eric Brittingham

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Dallas – Fort Worth is a vibrant and very expansive metropolitan area that has so much to do and see that we would definitely be able to fill one WILD Week of Exploring, Entertainment, Dining, and Sight-Seeing and start working on scheduling out a second week for sure. I would certainly recommend visiting our TWO amazing Zoological Parks right from the jump – The Dallas Zoo and the Fort Worth Zoo as I have worked and volunteered at both facilities and believe they should both be listed in the Top 10 Zoos in the Nation for the quality education, conservation, and exhibition they provide for the animals in their care but also what they provide for animals worldwide. As a big sports fanatic as well, I couldn’t let you get away without at least checking out our incredible BIG 4 sports facilities or even a game while you are here depending upon the season of course. I am a die hard baseball fan and love the Texas Rangers through the good and the ugly, so high on my list would be a trip to Globe Life Field to catch a game or at the very least tour the new ballpark and visit all the amazing food venues around Texas LIVE and take a stroll just up the road a ways to view and tour the amazing AT&T Stadium – home of the Dallas Cowboys. If the tour of those two sports complexes isn’t enough to impress you in a TEXAS-sized way, then we should definitely head ’em out to downtown Dallas to check out the American Airlines Center – home to the Dallas Mavericks and Dallas Stars and while we are in that neck of the woods, make it a point to visit the Perot Museum of Science and Nature plus the Dallas World Aquarium. before the week ends, and we will certainly be sure to check out where it all began for me – the River Legacy Living Science Center in Arlington and trek the urban forested trails before of course catching a Wildlife On The Move LIVE Animal Show at a local public venue before you leave the Lone Star State!

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to dedicate my shout out to K.C. Rudy my mentor and friend who made this Journey to Pursue My Passion possible! – Others that deserve a little credit and recognition: Don & Shari Brittingham – Susan Brittingham – Jim Jones – Tim Brys – Jack Hanna – Dave and Susan Kleven – River Legacy Living Science Center – Lacerte Family Children’s Zoo at the Dallas Zoo;

Website: http://www.wildlifeonthemove.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eric.wildlifeonthemove/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ericbrittingham22/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mrb_wotm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/liveanimalshows

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7k4W9fMMv4MpHUhv4yTK8Q

Other: https://www.patreon.com/AnimalAdventures https://mygivingcircle.org/charity/wildlife-on-the-move/ https://www.northtexasgivingday.org/wildlife-on-the-move

Image Credits
All Images Are Courtesy of Wildlife On The Move