He’s lived among a pride of lions, swum with great white sharks and trained Bengal tigers to live in the wild. One might think Dave Salmoni — zoologist and host of the new Mark Burnett TV reality series Expedition Impossible — is a bit of an adrenaline junkie.
Not so, says Salmoni.
“I’m not a thrill-seeker. I’m a calculated risk taker,” says the animal trainer who calls Toronto home. “I’m more safety focused than most people, probably because I like hanging out with the world’s largest predators.
“Unfortunately it’s really dangerous,” Salmoni adds.
Tapped as the host of reality TV king Burnett’s new adventure series, in part for his well-documented history of risk taking and quite possibly for his hunky good looks (attested to by many fans on the Internet), Salmoni appears on Expedition Impossible when it airs this summer on CTV and ABC.
He hopes the show continues for at least as many seasons as Burnett’s mega reality hit, Survivor, which has been renewed for an astounding 24th season.
Expedition Impossible follows 13 teams of three in a race across the deserts, mountains and rivers of Morocco. The winning team members will each be awarded $50,000 and an SUV. Each team represents a different slice of life in America. There’s “the New York Firemen,” “the California Girls” and “the Gypsies,” to name a few.
Salmoni says his job was to send them off and collect them at the end of each challenge but also to provide them with a bit of guidance and motivation.
“I’m their conduit to what they’re about to experience,” he says. “I’m also an authority figure: I tell them what they have to be careful of, but I also tell them, ‘Don’t give up and get going.’ ”
Although the contestants underwent some training to make sure they were capable swimmers and could ride a horse, Salmoni says safety was really left up to each contestant’s judgment.
“We send these people off, and the only thing they have between them falling off a cliff or a camel killing them is their own sensibilities and knowing what’s going too far,” Salmoni says.
It would be nice to have Salmoni around in a death-defying situation — especially one involving animals. The 35-year-old has made his living by putting his life on the line to train and better understand large predators. Somewhat surprisingly, Salmoni wasn’t raised with a great focus on animals. His mother was a figure skating coach and his father a chemical engineer.
Neither of his parents were particularly wildlife oriented. Salmoni says his love of the outdoors was fostered at their family cottage near Sudbury, Ont., where he spent his summers as a child.
Salmoni studied biology at Laurentian University and wrote his thesis tracking the hibernation of Canadian black bears. But it wasn’t until he apprenticed at the Bowmanville Zoo, 40 minutes east of Toronto, as an animal trainer, that he realized his true interest was working with animals rather than studying them.
“When I started having relationships with lions and tigers, I realized this is what makes me calm and happy. This is what people talk about when they find their passion.”
Salmoni trained under zoo owner Michael Hackenberger, who connected him with a Bengal tiger re-wilding project in South Africa. His experience was turned into the 2003 documentary Living with Tigers that aired on the Discovery Network.
He has since documented his diverse explorations with predatory animals through his production company Triosphere.
In Sharks: Are They Hunting Us? Salmoni dives in South African waters to investigate whether or not sharks target humans. In Rogue Nature he gets up close with bears, chimps, hippos and crocodiles in their natural environment.
But while it may sound like Salmoni’s daring verges on foolishness, he says everything he does is carefully analyzed.
“I’m always reading the animal. I know what every twitch, what every look means and when I need to be aggressive or submissive,” Salmoni says. “Each species has a dance that you’ve got to do.” Attacked by a lion he had worked with closely while training him in Ontario, Salmoni says it was a reminder never to become too trusting of an animal no matter how amiable you think it is.
“You have to stay on your game,” Salmoni says of the experience when the lion lunged at his throat. “If one of the nicest animals you’ve ever met is ready to kill you, it reminds you: ‘Oh s***, this could still go bad.’ ”
The experience also inspired Salmoni to create the show After the Attack, documenting victims’ retelling of their animal attacks, exploring how they survived and what may have triggered the incident.
Salmoni continued his work with big cats, filming Into the Pride (2009) on a private game reserve in Namibia. For six months he slept in a tent in the southern African bush trying to connect with a family of aggressive lions so they would become more accepting of tourists. The series — which aired on Animal Planet — shows Salmoni regularly being charged by the dominant female, Cleo, and her big-maned alpha male, Brutus, with only a long stick and his own chutzpah to protect him. One wonders what keeps Salmoni going in the face of such danger and repeated rejection.
“I think I was born with a passion for animals,” Salmoni says.
Salmoni bought a home in Toronto’s Little Italy, but he’s usually elsewhere around the globe working for 10 months of the year. When he’s home, he says, he likes that the city is close to where his parents and siblings live.
“Toronto is central for me,” he says. “It would probably be easier for me to live in Los Angeles, but you have to make adjustments in life to see family.”
At this point in his career he is able to choose where he wants to film and what animals he wants to work with.
“It’s a great place to be,” says Salmoni, who is looking to swim with polar bears, orca whales and whale sharks in the near future.
Salmoni credits much of his success to following his passion when it wasn’t affording him much luxury in life.
“I was not afraid to do what I loved and not worried about a paycheque — this has led to opportunity,” Salmoni says.