Month: November 2018

Creating Environmental Stewards in the Amazon

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Imagine if you were a teacher and your outdoor classroom was the Amazon rainforest. Endless biodiversity of every species of plant and animal you can imagine exists just a step outside your classroom walls. However, your teacher preparation was at a university in a city, and you have no idea where to begin teaching about ecology beyond what you’ve read in a teacher prep textbook. On top of these challenges, the only way to reach the community you’ve been assigned to work in is to take a boat down the Amazon River. The trip takes several hours, which means you’re only home on weekends and rarely have an opportunity to learn with or connect to other teachers.

Such is the case for the dedicated employees of CONAPAC, the Civil Association for Conservation of the Peruvian Amazon Environment, which was formed in July 1990 by a group of teachers, forestry engineers, and employees of the travel operator Explorama Lodges in Iquitos, Peru. Registered with the Peruvian government, its purpose is the conservation of the Peruvian Amazon primary rainforest. Though the staff is small, it serves those most in need of education and other tools for sustainable living in the rainforest, with the help of Explorama Lodges. The Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) has been a partner in this important conservation and education program for nearly 20 years.

As part of the services and support CONAPAC provides partner communities, an annual teacher workshop brings educators in these rural, remote communities together to learn. Earlier this year, Karen Purcell from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology returned for the second time to provide professional development for these teachers. Fluent in Spanish and passionate about birds, she delivers dynamic, hands-on workshops that demonstrates what teachers can do with their students by having the teachers do it with her. Guides from Explorama Lodges, who are also bird experts, assisted by guiding the teachers to understand how binoculars work, how they add excitement to bird observation, and how to identify common species.

Karen created a safe place for the teachers to share their attitudes towards birds, addressing common misconceptions and dispelling myths and legends that often cause people to dislike or even dispatch birds. She prepared them to be citizen scientists, gathering and sharing data on the species they see most in theircommunities. The teachers continue to document their successes and encourage one another through a massive group chat in WhatsApp. While there may not be internet access in these communities, almost all the teachers have a cell phone that has service and a means to charge the phone by generator or solar panel collected energy. Not a week goes by without a teacher posting photos of his or her students looking for birds, drawing them, building replica nests or some other activity. Karen and the team from CONAPAC are all on the group chat, documenting the progress in real time of how the workshop content is being implemented.

In early November, DZS staff returned to the rainforest to assist with end-of-the-year evaluations in each community. Teams of CONAPAC staff, Iquitos Board of Education representatives, local environmental experts and DZS staff traveled to each community to ensure school supplies are being utilized, children and teachers are attending school regularly, and that the teachers are implementing their skills and concepts shared with them during the workshops. The artwork, poems, field work and skits that the communities shared with the teams provided solid evidence that the spring workshops were a tremendous success.

Professional development is an essential part of any profession. The CONAPAC teacher workshops are a vital part of creating the next generation of environmental stewards, providing teachers and students the information and passion needed for protecting the rainforest for generations to come. This year’s workshop was supported through the generous financial support of JBQ Charitable Foundation and Explorama Lodges.  An international donor-base further provides financial support to provide annual teacher and student school supplies. To learn more or to participate in these efforts, visit https://detroitzoo.org/support/give/adopt-a-school/.

– Claire Lannoye-Hall is a curator of education for the Detroit Zoological Society.

Don’t Trash Your TV – Recycle it Instead

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If you’re daunted by dusty DVD players, tossed-aside televisions or rejected radios taking up space in the basement, the Detroit Zoological Society (DZS) can help give them new life. The DZS is hosting its first-ever America Recycles Day electronics recycling event at the Detroit Zoo on Thursday, November 15.

Michigan’s recycling rate is among the lowest in the country at only 15 percent. Gov. Rick Snyder set a goal of doubling that number, which would get us closer to (but still below) the national average of 35 percent. People may be shocked when they hear how low we rank – especially when they know there’s so much more we can do.

Old electronics – including radios, printers, computers, televisions and cell phones – can be dropped off for recycling from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the large 10 Mile Road parking lot near the gazebo on November 15. Sustainability talks will be held throughout the day to highlight the DZS’s award-winning initiatives and share important information about the impacts of waste on the environment.

For example, cell phone production – and its reliance on an ore found in Africa called coltan – is damaging wild habitats and decimating populations of gorillas and other animals. A 2:30 p.m. talk at the Great Apes of Harambee will dive deeper into how recycling old cell phones can help animals in the wild. Additional talks will be held at 11:30 a.m. near the guanaco habitat, where staff will discuss the DZS’s anaerobic digester and how it is annually turning 500 tons of animal waste into energy. A 1:30 p.m. talk at the Edward Mardigian Sr. River Otter Habitat will focus on plastic pollution and how the DZS is keeping 60,000 plastic bottles out of the waste stream annually by no longer selling bottled water. In addition, an activity in the underwater gallery of the Polk Penguin Conservation Center from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. will highlight the dangers animals face due to plastic waste.

While the following items aren’t a part of our electronics recycling event and can’t be recycled curbside, here are some options you have to still help the environment:

  • Batteries: Batteries contain heavy metals and chemicals. Throwing them out with the trash can contaminate the soil and pollute water. Many hardware stores will accept your household batteries prevent them from ending up in landfills. You can even take an old car battery to your local auto parts store to be recycled, too. Earth 911 can help you find locations near you to bring your old batteries.
  • Running shoes: If your athletic shoes have seen better days, there are a few things you can do instead of tossing them in the trash. If they’re still in decent shape, you can donate them to your local thrift store or to One World Running. One World Running is a nonprofit organization that distributes lightly used running shoes to those in need all over the world. If your shoes are completely worn out, you can donate them to Nike’s Reuse-a-Shoe program by dropping them off at any Nike store. Through this program, your old shoes will be recycled into things such as running tracks, underlay material for basketball courts or padding for football goal posts. The shoes can be any brand to be donated to Reuse-a-Shoe.
  • Holiday lights: It’s almost that time of year – you know, the time to take out the holiday lights just to discover they don’t work anymore? If that’s the case, bring them to the Detroit Zoo during Wild Lights for free holiday light recycling. Or, you can ship them to Holiday LEDs and they will take the burnt-out bulbs off your hands! If you choose either of these methods, Holiday LEDs will provide you with a coupon for 15 percent off HolidayLEDs lights.

Even though America Recycles Day is celebrated once a year, it’s important to consider the world around us and what we can do to help in our daily lives.  Learn more about our award-winning commitment to sustainability here.

Animal Welfare: In the Dark – Aardvark Well-Being

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If you share your home with an animal companion, have you ever wondered what he or she does when you are not home? Some people install cameras that allow them to use their phones to take a peek at what their dog is up to, or where the cat is spending her time. We also wonder about what animals do at the Detroit Zoo when we are not here, and this is especially true for nocturnal animals who are most active when we are sleeping. Aardvarks are one of those species, and the Detroit Zoological Society has been using cameras to study their behavior.

Aardvarks are native to sub-Saharan Africa, and not only are they primarily nocturnal, but they are also fossorial, meaning they dig and burrow underground. This makes them even more challenging to observe, as you can imagine! The four aardvarks who live at the Detroit Zoo are cared for by the night keeper unit, whose hours allow for expanded opportunities for animals, including those who are active later into the night. The staff come up with creative ideas to engage the aardvarks and stimulate natural behaviors.

We installed a number of infrared cameras in the habitat, allowing us to record what the aardvarks do and where they choose to spend their time. Initial research revealed that they had specific preferences, such as sleeping in culverts, which are reminiscent of underground burrows, and that their activity levels varied by individual. Roxaanne, one of the females, preferred to stay up much later than the others, for example. Additionally, we found that when the aardvarks engaged in more investigative behaviors, they had lower fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM) concentrations. Decreased levels of FGMs have been correlated with lower stress levels and overall positive welfare. By taking behavior and hormones into account, we get a more comprehensive picture of the well-being of the aardvarks under different conditions.

Jennifer Hamilton, DZS animal welfare programs coordinator, worked with the animal care staff to develop a new project aimed to increase behavioral opportunities for the aardvarks, by specifically targeting more foraging and investigative behaviors. Jennifer and a small team of dedicated volunteers watched more than 220 hours of “aardvark television”. Talk about binge-watching reality TV! In addition to the behavioral data, the care staff once again collected daily fecal samples on each aardvark so that we could analyze them for FGMs.

Higher levels of investigative behaviors were again linked to lower levels of FGMs. This suggests that these types of behaviors are important for aardvarks and need to be encouraged. The behavior data also showed that foraging opportunities were used for longer periods of time when initially presented, but that investigative opportunities were used more as the night went on. As part of the project, the aardvarks were presented with seven opportunities once a week for eight weeks. We were able to confirm that the aardvarks did not lose interest over time, meaning that repeated interactions don’t bore them! Finally, the aardvarks’ use of the opportunities differed based on their location. The aardvarks have access to different spaces, which vary in their substrates and features. One of the spaces has a very large and deep dirt area, and the aardvarks spent less time engaged in the extra opportunities provided when in that habitat. This may be indicative of a flexible value system, with less value placed on additional opportunities when overall conditions may already be more stimulating. This is an important concept as we explore what type of choices are meaningful to animals and how to create environments that enable them to thrive.

– Dr. Stephanie Allard is the director of animal welfare for the Detroit Zoological Society and oversees the Center for Zoo and Aquarium Animal Welfare and Ethics.