Humankind must learn to understand that the life of an animal is in no way less precious than our own.

-Paul Oxton

The topic of this blog post was inspired by just one sentence my boss said to me today: “We had a woman call us who said she bought a gray fox online and wanted to know how to take care of it.” Simple, but it immediately got me thinking. If it’s easy enough to just google “gray foxes for sale”, there has to be some sort of agency stopping that, right? And how can we help?

Well wouldn’t you know, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service has an International Affairs Program handling just that: the illegal selling of protected or managed wildlife and wildlife products. Under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service was put in charge of carrying out the provisions CITES, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (thank God for that acronym, right?). CITES took form in 1975, and is a treaty in which 182 countries (and the European Union) take part to ensure the survival of wild populations of animals and plants around the world – 35,000 species, 136 of those being in the United States. They even release biennial reports where they outline successes and improvements they can make, and you can find those all here. As of 2014, the International Affairs Program has four goals:

1. “Build capacity, values, and partnerships for species and habitat conservation, with a focus on innovation” (which includes providing institutions and education to areas experiencing trafficking/poaching)
2. “Conserve priority species and habitats across landscapes” (this includes providing funding and technical support to conservation practices)
3. “Conserve species and habitats through international treaties, agreements, protocols, and domestic laws” (this one includes creating more treaties and protocols and enforcing laws to uphold CITES)
4. “Motivate conservation actions by raising awareness of and support for species and habitats” (this one is basically making sure other places are sharing what they know and also upholding CITES)

So obviously there’s more to each of those goals, but that’s the gist. This Program is comprised of three Divisions: Management Authority, Scientific Authority, and International Conservation. They have conservation programs for specific species such as African Elephants and Marine Turtles, and three regional programs in three different parts of the world.

By now you’re probably wondering why I’m going into such depth about this government agency…fair. In times like these when it feels like the government has so much wrong with it, knowing that organizations like this exist and are doing their jobs well gives me hope (and yes, I know a few entries ago I mentioned that we shouldn’t have hope, but I’ll get to that later). For example, one of their many success stories was that in Manas, India, locals have begun planting lemon trees around their homes to deter Asian Elephants from foraging on their crops – and it actually works. Planting trees while avoiding needless killing? It’s a win-win! I’m all about it.

And I think this is worth mentioning: have you heard of CoP21, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in 2015? Well, there is a CITES equivalent called the World Wildlife Conference, and CoP18 was supposed to take place in Sri Lanka this year (2019), but was postponed due to the “tragic events” that took place on April 21st. So maybe this is just me being out of touch with the world news, but I had no idea that suicide bombings took place in three churches, three hotels, a housing complex and a guest house in Sri Lanka?! That was definitely a tangent, or we can call it a good reminder that sometimes the wildlife conservation field can take you to some dangerous places (although tragic events like these seem to be more common these days worldwide, but that’s a topic for a different blog. Back to wildlife.).

If you’re someone like me who loves wildlife purely for their intrinsic value (which I’m assuming you do because why else would you still be reading?), you might wonder why people would harm and sell wildlife anyways. There’s so many reasons why any of this illegal activity happens, one of which being traditional medicine, such as the rumor in Vietnam that a rhino horn can cure cancer. Because of this rumor (that has no scientific backing), Rhino poaching in Africa increased 7,700% from 2007-2013…that’s only 6. Years. The Western Black Rhino and Northern White Rhino have recently been declared extinct in the wild because of this poaching. And of course Rhinos aren’t the only species affected. There are only 3,890 tigers known to be left in the wild – and not just in one country – the entire world.

The statistics are scary, but what’s even scarier is that even with advanced scientific understanding, some countries are regressing. And yes, I’m looking at you China;  as of October 2018, China lifted the ban on using tiger bones and rhino horns in traditional medicine practices in hospitals. They justify it by only allowing captive-bred animals, of which there are currently 7,000-8,000 individuals on farms in mostly East and Southeast Asia. And this totally seems to go against the establishment of the Tiger and Leopard National Park, which is 1.6 times the size of the U.S.’s Yellowstone National Park.

What’s so frustrating to me about the entire thing is that it’s literally driven by greed. Especially in Africa, so many poachers who are caught in the act are poor locals who rely on the money from poaching to take care of their families, or they even take bushmeat (meat from non-domesticated animals) to feed them and their families. So in order to stop wildlife trafficking you also need to go to the root of the problem, which is really tied into human injustice and inequality. And traditional medicine itself is often tied into the culture of the area, so you’re essentially challenging their beliefs. The more I think about it, the more my head hurts. So let’s get on to what we can do to try to help even in the smallest way – little ways you can make a difference so you don’t need to just ‘hope’.

The World Wildlife Fund, commonly known as WWF, has a petition you can sign here to help WWF urge governments, local and foreign, to strengthen laws and invest more into getting people on the ground to defend wildlife. They only need 51,000 more signatures to reach 500,000, and it’s free, so really you have nothing to lose. However, if you’d like to put your money where your mouth is, the WWF has many other ways you can help their mission to protect wildlife. You can also support the Wildlife Conservation Society in their goal to conserve areas that would preserve 50% of the world’s biodiversity.  These are such a small sample of the conservation programs out there, if you want to find a more local organization to support, literally just google “wildlife conservation”.

There’s also some (what should be) obvious ways you can help, like by not buying illegal wildlife to own as pets, be mindful of souvenirs you buy when traveling the globe (a good rule is if you don’t know what you’re buying is made of, don’t buy it!), but do support local communities when traveling so less money is needed from illegal practices, and just continue to educate yourself. There is so much information out there. As always, just be cautious of where you get your information (are there other sources you can cross-reference? How did they get their info?). And on that note, I’ll list mine!

Thanks to anyone who’s read this far, or read literally any of my previous posts even a little bit…I appreciate you 🙂

More great resources:

https://www.fws.gov/international/

https://www.worldwildlife.org/

https://wildnet.org/

https://www.nwf.org/Our-Work/Wildlife-Conservation

https://www.awf.org/wildlife-conservation

 

As I celebrated my last day of my undergraduate classes, I finally realized what a feat it is to be a student.

I was talking with one of the counselors at my university (and just a side note – if you’re in college, and your college has free counseling services, go. At least once. It’s so important to check in with yourself every once and a while, and I promise it’s not as scary as you think it is) and she asked if I was excited to graduate. I said yes, but it didn’t feel special really. I assumed college graduation would feel a lot like graduating high-school; just another thing I had to do.

But after my talk with her, I realized that it was special and something to be especially celebrated. We all decided to go to college. Those of us graduating have put in (typically) four years of hard work, dedication, and otherwise putting other aspects of our life on hold to get an education. But even so, college is so much more than an education. College offers you so many perspectives in a unique way that you often can’t get from staying in your home town.

So many people throughout the past four years have said I don’t know what the “real world” is like, or that they thought college was a waste of money. No, I don’t know what the “real world” is like, whatever that even means. But just because college isn’t a 9-5, 40 hour a week job doesn’t mean it’s easy. College is sometimes having class for 10 hours a day, then working one or two part-time jobs to pay your rent (yes, not all of us get to live in dorms…thanks UVM), pay your bills, and pay for food. College is coming home from those classes and feeling guilty for watching TV or hanging out with your friends because there’s always more work to be done. College is desperately trying to maintain relationships with people from your life back home, and trying to establish a new life wherever your university is. It is uniquely difficult, and different for every student.

I lost sight of the privilege I had to even go to college. I was so lucky to have a family who could support me the last four years, because not every student has a system like that. I know full-time students who are 30 and are married, have kids and a home to pay for. How could you tell them they don’t know what the “real world” is?

But today is graduation.

Today, students, teachers, families and friends will gather to celebrate all that we as students have accomplished. After today, for those of us not continuing our education, we will be launched into the “real world” and have to cope with the fact that our identities are no longer tied to being a student. I don’t know exactly where my life is going – I don’t even know where or what I’ll be doing 6 months from now. But I do know this: ending my academic career does not mean I have to stop learning. Although school has been a great way to facilitate my learning, it’s also fostered a deep appreciation for it.

I don’t know why I’ve felt compelled to write such a personal entry, but I felt the need to do some sort of ode to college. Maybe someone out there feeling dismal about graduation or the “real world” can read this and feel a bit better (which is all I can ask for). And truly, it did take a whole village-worth of people to get me to where I am today, and I could not be more grateful for all the people I get to call family and friends.

Thank you all.

When we realize the degree of agency we actually do have, we no longer have to “hope” at all. We simply do the work. We make sure salmon survive. We make sure prairie dogs survive. We make sure grizzlies survive. We do whatever it takes.

-Derrick Jensen

I find it appropriate that the day to pick this blog back up is on Earth Day. On this day 49 years ago, 20 million Americans protested against the over-exploitation and abuse of the environment and declared it ‘Earth Day’. Today, it does not feel that we have the same sense of togetherness. Because today, 49 years later, carbon concentrations in our atmosphere have increased by 90 parts per million (ppm).

I am currently in my last month of my undergraduate degree as a Wildlife Biologist. Today has made me realize how necessary an education like mine is, and I am grateful I got this opportunity. In this essay by David Orr (an environmental educator), he states that an education in some discipline like Business or Political Science is no longer enough – every education needs to be about teaching us to be better people, and environmentalists. We are at a point in human history where we are more disconnected than ever from the environment, and we are headed towards irreversibly ruining our planet. In fact, we only have until 2030 to make changes before all hope is lost.

Hope.

I stumbled across an article by Derrick Jensen titled “Beyond Hope“. In Jensen’s article, he tells the reader to give up hope. Having hope, in an environmental sense, is the most detrimental thing to making progress towards a better Earth. Why? Because having hope gives you an excuse to not make a difference. Having ‘hope’ that someone will save the tigers means you’re expecting someone else to save the tigers for you. On this Earth Day in 2019, I decided to give up hope. I went out to a local park that I frequent and brought a trash bag with me, and filled it within the two and half hours I was there. Although one trash bag of garbage removed from one park isn’t enough to save the world, it’s personally a start.

But should we keep taking individual action? Should I continue to use re-usable bags and metal straws and pickup garbage I see in the woods? Or do we start to hold the 100 companies accountable for the 71% of emissions they have contributed to our global disaster? We are constantly being told, from multiple sides, what we as consumers should be doing to try to stop or slow down climate change. But don’t let capitalism blind you to the real problem: you cannot stop climate change on your own. Your metal straw and paper bags won’t save the Sea Turtles. The problem is with our system. The problem is that the people who are responsible for 71% of emissions have the money and therefore the power to protect themselves from having to change their unsustainable ways. What is most important is voting people into positions of power that believe in climate change (the fact that it’s 2019 and we’re still debating whether or not climate change is even real is truly laughable), and that will deliver on their promises to make good changes. What is also important is coming to an agreement that the way we are currently living (at least in America) is not sustainable, and not responsible.

Now, I don’t want to make this post make you feel personally hopeless. I want you to give up hope that people will make changes for you – I want you to take action against the people making this planet a harsher place to live. I want you to be angry. And more importantly, I want you to want what I want: I want everyone to give a shit about the planet we call home.

There are still so many things to celebrate, so many things I enjoy that could easily disappear. Habitat loss and degradation also contribute to the mass extinction event most animals on our planet are currently experiencing. One species I love to see is Osprey (Pandion haliaetus).

This is a pair of Osprey I observed last week, in the same exact spot I had seen them last year. To me, Osprey are a sign of recovery: From the 1950s-70s, Osprey populations plummeted due to ingesting the chemical DDT. Remember that whole environmental movement thing I talked about at the beginning? Thanks to those 20 million Americans 49 years ago, Osprey are recovering and returning to parts of their range where DDT had killed them off.

If you’ve read any of my previous posts it’s clear that I love birds, but there’s so many other creatures out there that are also amazing, like this Jefferson Salamander (Ambystoma jeffersonianum), that deserve to be protected (excuse his blurry little face! Getting a clear picture of a squirmy salamander is a challenge).

Although Jefferson Salamander’s are considered rare in Vermont (where I am currently living/in school), if we continue to preserve and not develop wetlands/ponds/other freshwater habitats, we can continue to find Jefferson Salamanders and so many other species.

So what’s the point of this entry? To summarize:

1. Don’t have hope
2. Give a shit about something, preferably this planet
3. Do something

I’ll leave this to-do list as up to interpretation as possible, because if everyone cared as much as I do about birds and mammals and herps (reptiles/amphibians), it’d be great, but there’s so much more to love about the natural world. Find your thing that you love, whether that be water, a beetle, or some fungus, and do everything you can think of to make sure that in the future, other people will be able to love that thing too. Don’t wait for someone to tell you what to do and how to do it. Figure it out, then get out there and do it.

Other sources:

• https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/#_ga=2.27020603.72276738.1555960596-1577327411.1553618895
• https://www.theguardian.com/environment/true-north/2017/jul/17/neoliberalism-has-conned-us-into-fighting-climate-change-as-individuals
• https://www.earthday.org/

Every time you spend money, you’re casting a vote for the kind of world you want.

-Anna Lappe

As someone who grew up dreaming of being a conservationist, one would think that I would be morally opposed to the practice of hunting in any form. However, I’m hoping this will be a good platform to explain just why we need to encourage people to hunt.

The video above sparked my interest enough in this topic to hopefully get a conversation going about it. To summarize, the Scimitar Horned Oryx (Oryx dammah) is a species that has roamed the plains of Africa for hundreds of thousands of years, but in recent years has been declared extinct in the wild. What made the Scimitar Horned Oryx go extinct was over-hunting – but hunting is also what kept the species alive in other parts of the world.

Apparently in Texas, there are trophy hunting ranches that house hundreds of non-native species, such as giraffe, zebra, and this Oryx. In fact if it weren’t for these ranches, the Oryx would be gone forever. And I know what you’re probably thinking – trophy hunting is bad, immoral, and a waste of an animal. I’m not arguing any of those points. But what funds the continuation of these species are hunters. In fact, since the 1930s, hunters alone have contributed over $14 billion in the United States to conservation practices. They’ve also helped conserve species such as the Wood Duck (Aix sponsa), the Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni), and pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana).

But how have hunters managed to do this?

There are two major ways that hunters contribute to conservation efforts, and that’s with the Duck Stamp and the Pittman-Robertson Act. Waterfowl hunters 16 years and older are required to purchase a Duck Stamp, but anyone can buy one. In fact, a Duck Stamp will give you free pass into any national wildlife refugee that charges an entry fee. 98% of the purchase price of these stamps directly helps protect wetland habitats, so your money is well spent. The Pittman-Robertson Act puts an 11% excise tax on sporting arms and ammunition; 75% of the funds from the Pittman-Robertson Act goes towards wildlife management and restoration projects, such as research, surveys and inventories of wildlife issues, hunting education courses and more.

If you’re like me and grew up in a city, not surrounded by people who hunt, then your first instinct is to hate hunters because they kill animals. Although this is true, it’s not because they hate animals. In general, it’s the exact opposite, and has been for a long time. Back in the 1800s, hunters and fishers have pushed forth the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation when they realized that wildlife was rapidly disappearing. Although there are seven guidelines to the model, the gist is this: fish and wildlife belong to all Americans (no matter what socio-economic status or race), and that our wildlife needs to be managed in a way that they will be sustained forever.

Now let’s tie it all back to the trophy hunting ranches in Texas: Although they are indeed killing individuals in the population, they are also the only ones funding the continuation of these species by hunting them. So does this make hunting an endangered species wrong? Are they even considered critically endangered at this point? What do you think?

To maintain a neutral standpoint, I say that we need to manage populations, not individuals. Although I love animals, and you probably do too if you’re here, we can’t save every animal. And although it’s unfortunate, if we’re implementing our best practices to save a species, which leads to the death of some individuals in that population, then we are doing our job as wildlife lovers. As said in the video above, only 10% of the population is allowed to be hunted every year. The hunting of those individuals brings in the funds needed to keep this species alive.

And although we want every individual animal to survive, we also need to keep in mind that the world does not have enough space for every single animal that we want to survive. The planet houses over 7 billion humans, and we take up a lot of space that’s needed by other species. If we are to continue growing at the rate we are, we need to realize we won’t have giant herds of animals such as the Scimitar Horned Oryx wandering the earth anymore.

As a wrap up thought, I’ll leave this picture of David Attenborough right here:

P.S. If you’d like to do your part, you can purchase Duck Stamps online here.

Thank you for clicking on this blog!

What drives me is that moment of discovery. I love the unknown.

-Jeff Corwin

I’ve loved wildlife for as long as I can remember. When I was a young girl, I played with dinosaurs and figurines of cheetahs – not Barbies. I grew up watching the likes of Jack Hannah, Steve Irwin and Jeff Corwin on Animal Planet. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I didn’t want to be the president or an astronaut, I wanted to be a conservationist like the guys I watched on T.V. I didn’t want easy-bake ovens or American girl dolls for Christmas, I wanted Animal Encyclopedias.

Unlike some kids nowadays, my reward for being good was being able to explore outside, not sit in front of an iPad. As most kids, I was attracted to charismatic megafauna such as wolves, jaguars and elephants. As I grew up, my love for animals grew as well. Although I grew up in a city, I spent as much time as I could exploring the 325-acre park near my house. I loved reading books about wildlife and watching documentaries, but I didn’t know a lot about the wildlife around me. Growing up in a city in New Hampshire didn’t expose me to a lot of the charismatic megafauna as I’d hoped, but it was a great place to start.

And I guess that’s the theme of this blog. You don’t need much around you in order to learn, you just need a love of nature. Although the Northern Cardinal pictured above may be a common sight to most people, to me it was a bright flash of color in an otherwise dull city. And these fleeting moments where I got to interact with wildlife is what drove me to pursue a higher education in wildlife biology.

A love of nature can take you to some amazing places. I’m certainly not the most well-traveled person, and I certainly haven’t seen what most people would consider amazing creatures or places. But I’ve gone from watching common songbirds to photographing some endangered raptors around New England, such as this Osprey below. It’s not a huge step, but to me it’s a good start.

I’ve thought about starting this blog for a while now, just to have a platform to discuss important topics in regards to wildlife and the environment in general, and hopefully encourage others to do the same. I’m not exactly sure where this blog where go, but at least this is a start.