The world needs you.  

Not only are we living during one of the most challenging times in our country’s history trying to survive a pandemic, a highly emotional fall election and the threat of climate change, but we are also living though an extinction event called the Holocene extinction.  Commonly referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, scientists estimate that more than 500 species of land animals are on the brink of extinction and likely to be lost within 20 years.  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates that over 30,000 species, or 27% of all of those that have been assessed, face extinction. This includes nearly a sixth of all birds, a quarter of all mammals and almost half of all amphibians.   Do you want to do something more than making a financial donation, perhaps you want to get involved with your feet on the ground.

Here at the El Paso Zoo we are focusing on providing excellent, expert, and compassionate care for our animals while actively saving wildlife from extinction through our conservation efforts.  We also are working to inspire people to value wild animals and to take action to help ensure their place in the wild.  The big problem we and other zoos face is how the world’s conservation challenges are too big for any one Zoo or even an association of zoos to tackle. 

Like there are a multitude of conservation challenges in our world today, there are also a multitude of ways people can get involved.   One way that we don’t hear a whole lot about these days is how it only takes one person to organize a conservation effort.    I could share with you many stories, but the one I know best is one that in 1995 I organized in Zambia on the continent of Africa. I had just started a job with the Carlsbad Caverns Guadalupe Mountains Association and wanted to use some of the money I was saving to organize a conservation education  project that I could be actively involved in.   I went on my first safari a few years earlier and knew that if I could collaborate with someone living in Africa, I could make a difference.  The first challenge was figuring out what project to work on.   When you start looking you will find that there are all kinds of opportunities are out there especially in third world countries where many conservation projects depend heavily on support from environmental groups in the west.  

In figuring out what project I could work on I first set aside some money under the name The Lost Hope Wildlife Fund.  Soon after I started contacting different groups I found on the internet a number of people who were working on projects across Africa.   One day I received an email from the Frankfort Zoological Society.  The Society encouraged me to contact Trish Boulton who at the time was a teacher working with communities at North Luangwa National Park in Zambia.   When I contacted her she told me that she needed help with workbooks that teachers could use in helping students understand how the ecosystem works and how they could play a part in helping to protect it and the park.

Not long after I said yes to working on the project, Trish sent me by email pages of education curriculum and some pictures of animals that lived in the park.  Back in those days I did not have all the high tech scanners and editing software that I have now, but I did have a computer and a printer.  I also had several books of animal clip art.  I knew that reproducing with a copy machine pictures of animals with clip art would look better than photographs.   Once I had all the text on my computer I created a cover, designed each page of the curriculum with clip art and headed to Office Depot to make 250 copies of the 36-page work book.  In getting all the materials together that I needed, I bought heavy paper stock for the covers and a coil binding machine.  

One of the organizations that I connected with during the early stages of the project was the Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation.  Zoologists Mark and Delia Owens started their work in Africa back in 1974 and later organized the foundation to support their work.   Some of you may be familiar with their books like Eye of the Elephant and Cry of the Kalahari.  The foundation’s office was located in Stone Mountain, Georgia and since I wanted to make sure that the 250 workbooks made it to Trish, I mailed everything to the foundation.   Not long after the books arrived at the park in Zambia. The pictures I am including with this blog tell the rest of the story. 

Here in El Paso there are people from all walks of life working to educate and motivate all of us to do more to help protect our environment, people like Neysa Hardin at America’s High School for example.  Neysa is a member of the El Paso Sierra Club group where she has for many years now been the leader of the Americas High School Sierra Student Coalition.  Because of the pandemic the group has cancelled all activities until early in 2021, but just last year the group hiked trails like the Lost Dog Trail here in El Paso, Dripping Springs Trail in the Organ Mountains Desert Peaks National Monument, the Osha Trail in the Lincoln National Forest and volunteered at an El Paso Zoo lecture on the Black Bear of Big Bend National Park as a community-service project.  

Neysa is just one example; I could also tell you about Judy Ackerman of the Franklin Mountains Wilderness Coalition, Dr. Kevin Floyd of the Audubon Society and Erica Rocha who last year organized an El Paso Transmountain Cleanup Event.   Contact anyone of them and get involved with their efforts.

If you want to start up your own project and need help in anyway feel free to contact me and we can communicate by email or on the phone.  As Margaret Mead once said ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.’

Rick LoBello, Education Curator

Photo Credits
Top – elephants, Alex Berger, Wikimedia Creative Commons
Bottom – hippos, Alex Berger, Wikimedia Creative Commons