A Zoo Adventure: bat conservation international

Monday, April 23, 2012

Party for the Planet!

Earth Day was this past weekend and we had a great event at the El Paso Zoo to celebrate wildlife and the environment and to challenge people to make a difference!

If you know me at all, you know I love my Earth. Yup, it's mine. Everyone should feel like the Earth belongs to them and say, "yes, it is my world and I should take care of it!" This past weekend was a chance to spread that Earthy enthusiasm to others.

Throughout the zoo there were activities, educational stations, partner organization booths and party music! My area was appropriately titled "Dig in the Dirt" and was a chance for kids to get dirty. Kids had to dig through three kiddie pools filled with dirt to find five plastic bugs each to win a prize of edible dirt! I was a bit apprehensive that people wouldn't want to eat the dirt but boy was I wrong. We made about 160 edible dirt cups and quickly gave them all out to eager kids with their dug up bugs and dirty hands. The next day we moved on to a prize of an edible worm (sour gummy style) which was just as big of a hit.

My banner - all about how our soil is an important ecosystem service that goes unnoticed.

Throughout the zoo, people had the chance to learn all about how our environment silently gives back to us. "Ecosystem Services are the processes by which the environment produces resources that we often take for granted such as clean water, timber, and habitat for fisheries, and pollination of native and agricultural plants." In El Paso, and around the world, these ecosystem services are being taken for granted as we plow through open wildlife habitat to make roads wider, build bigger houses and much more.

Edible dirt! and yup cups are recyclable.

Although I didn't have much time to really "teach" about soil and its importance to our world, I was extremely happy to let kids get their hands dirty, sometimes at the sadness of their parents. I loved the transformation of the "we have to do what" attitude to being aggressive to find more and more bugs with no fear.

Digging for bugs and getting their hands dirty!

Inside the classroom people had an opportunity to create a pledge of their commitment to make a difference in their everyday life to help out wildlife and the environment. At first I thought we may get a few people to do it, but volunteers were awesome and we inspired lots of people to make a pledge! They were also able to view the zoo staff and volunteers making their pledge on the TV in the room. Click here to view the video that includes our zoo director, education curator and of course yours truly, pledging to make a difference!

So proud of all of the kids and parents that made a pledge to change the world!

Check out some of the heart warming pledges that were made! :)

The classroom at the end of day one collecting more and more pledges!

Also got a quick chance to run around the zoo to see what was going on everywhere else. Take a quick look at the excitement. The education team offered many stations to learn more about ecosystem services and how you can take action to help our Earth and wildlife.

Miss Rose teaching kids all about PPMs! Should have stopped by if you don't know!

Waiting for their customers to teach them all about climate change!

Rock climbing wall! Wish I got a chance.

These guys are my go to for plant ID! Love them! Wish I had their knowledge.

Plants and diseases and pests! Grow a garden everyone!

Did you know just knowing that wild spaces are out there brings joy and happiness to people! CRAZY!

They auctioned off a Prius on Sunday in Las Cruces, I wonder who won???

I did not get a chance to make it over to my home girls (Heather) station in Africa where you could grow your own tornillo plant to be planted at the Rio Bosque park to restore native plants in the area. What a unique way to help out the environment and I am excited to see what we get back in one month! Unfortunately these little bugs have been eating lots of the seeds so it was a challenge to find the seeds, but making it all the more worth it in the end to see growing, healthy plants!

What a great weekend to celebrate the Earth. Let's continue it all year long.

And someone recently told me, I can't change the world! I screamed back, YES I CAN!

Pure sass.

:)

Planet Party

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Happy Halloweeeeen!

Happy Halloween all!

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays although I did not dress up this year. I had visions of dressing up as a bat with white nose syndrome but it just didn't come to fruition. I wanted to draw attention to white nose syndrome (WNS). In the past week scientists made a small breakthrough and were able to prove that a fungus (Geomyces sp.) causes white nose syndrome. White nose syndrome was first seen in New York in 2006, has been spreading ever since and has made its way across the Mississippi river. Over One Million bats have died from WNS and although it effects more than one species the little brown bat populations are declining rapidly due to WNS. To date, WNS is confirmed in 19 states and now threatens the endangered Indiana myotis, gray myotis, and Virginia big-eared bats.

You may be wondering who cares? Well one little brown bat can eat about 400 mosquitoes in one night. I don't know about you but I HATE mosquitoes and if we lose bats the population of insects will increase, and the diseases mosquitoes carry (such as West Nile virus) will also increase. You also may be worried about somehow magically getting rabies from seeing a bat. Less than one percent of bats carry rabies. Unless you are consistently picking up bats, you are at more risk to aquire rabies from a dog or squirrel. Any mammal can carry rabies. During graduate school, I had the lucky (or unlucky) pleasure of of being bit by lots of bats from mexican free tailed bats, big brown, pipistrelles and more and have yet to show signs of frothing at the mouth due to rabies.

So what can you do to help bats in the wild?

1. Build a bat house! I am sooo excited for January as we will be hosting a bat workshop where we build bat houses! Need more info? Click here.

2. Contact your government officials and urge them to support bat conservation! For more info and sample letters click here.

3. Learn more about bats and take a look at Bat Conservation International. A phenomenal organization whose mission is: to conserve the world's bats and their ecosystems to ensure a healthy planet.

4. Celebrate Year of the Bat! The United Nations has declared 2011-2012 as year of the bat. Many organizations around the world will be hosting events to bring awareness to bats. Get involved in your local area! If there isn't already something going on, why not host an event! For more info click here.

BOO at the ZOO: This weekend was Boo at the Zoo at the El Paso Zoo and we had a blast! Almost 8,000 people came to participate in pumpkin bowling, Halloween maze, Halloween games, candy stations and over 20 animal enrichment programs! It was very busy for three education specialists with 26 educational programs to carry out. I was excited to reach out to so many people. Hopefully while they watched the animals playing with their Halloween enrichments, they were inspired to help support them in the wild. To refresh your memory of what an enrichment is, read a recent blog post: click here.

I spoke about so many conservation initiatives and ways to get involved, if one person takes it home then I have done my job. Here are a few of the conservation initiatives I brought up during programs: recycling, buying recycled products, buy local, avoid palm oil, plant native plants, sustainable seafood, water conservation, and so many more.

I loved watching the animals receiving their enrichments and so did the public. The Enrichment Coordinator and all the keepers worked very hard to have pumpkins, scarecrows and bobbing for apples for all the animals. The animals were very grateful. Here are some pictures: