About Graham Meadows


Graham Meadows qualified as a veterinary surgeon in England, where he practiced for nine years before emigrating to New Zealand. A further 4 years in veterinary practice were followed by 5 years as curator and veterinarian at the Auckland Zoo. While there he established a certified training course for zoo keepers, and developed programmes focused on the captive breeding of endangered species. He then embarked on a media career, which included writing and presenting two television series about domestic animals for Television New Zealand, and ten years writing a regular newspaper column and hosting a radio talk-back programme. He also worked as Regional co-ordinator for the World Wildife Fund (WWF), carrying out speaking engagements and running seminars about wildlife conservation and endangered species.

Writing and Illustration

In the late 1980's Graham Meadows began writing non-fiction educational books for primary school children. Soon after this he commenced a career as a professional photographer, providing photographic illustrations for his own books and also for books written by other authors. To date he has written and illustrated more than one hundred children's educational books, and has provided photographic illustrations for more than 250 others. Publishers who have used images from his photo library include New Holland Publishers, Macmillan Publishing, Pearson Learning, Rigby, Scholastic New Zealand, Sunshine Books and Weldon Owen Inc. He currently writes many books with a co-author, zoologist Claire Vial. Together they have written and illustrated fifty educational books about animals, for children aged 6-8 years. These are published by Dominie Press Inc., a division of the Pearson Learning Group, under the series title The Dominie World of Living Things. They cover invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Claire and Graham have also written twelve books for children aged 5-6 years, published by Cavallo Publishing in San Diego.




After providing many of the illustrations for The Noble Cat (David Bateman Ltd, 1990) Graham Meadows wrote and illustrated a series of books for Reed Publishing New Zealand. These included: An Illustrated Guide to Dogs (1992), An Illustrated Guide to Cats (1993), The New Zealand Guide to Cattle Breeds (1996), and Sheep Breeds of New Zealand (1997). Re-writes of the cattle and sheep books are due for publication by New Holland Publishers (NZ) in September of this year. Two non-fiction books were co-authored with veterinarian and animal behaviour specialist Elsa Flint for New Holland (Publishers) Ltd. They are The Dog Owner's Handbook (2001) and The Cat Owner's Handbook (2001). New editions of these have now been produced.

Photography

Graham Meadows has amassed more than 80,000 images, and in addition to other assignments is currently the chief photographer for the Auckland Zoo. Through his company Graham Meadows Ltd, he has set up the photo library service featured on this web site. There are currently 64 photographers contributing images, representing a wide variety of subjects and interests, and the number of contributors and images is steadily growing.