Damien Egan started working professionally with reptiles in 1994 in South Africa, and became curator of two prominent reptile centres there before moving to the Middle East at the beginning of 2000. During his time in the Middle East, he headed up various captive breeding conservation programmes, resulting in the first captive breeding of numerous species of rare reptiles, amphibians and freshwater fishes. Damien has travelled to a great many remote areas throughout the region, doing baseline surveys, rapid assessment surveys, environmental impact assessments and specimen collection, as well as giving talks and lectures on reptiles, snake bites and related subjects.