Get EdZooCated!

Photo by Marie Kraus

This spring has been so exciting at the Zoo with all the new babies! We have our little golden lion tamarin, the three adorable baby goats, the roly-poly lion cubs, and our latest addition, Kumang’s daughter, a Bornean orangutan. And of course like all families, there have multitudes of pictures taken of these precious little babies. Yesterday, I was struck by the amazing photo (to the right) of Kumang cradling her baby’s hand in hers.

This photo instantly made me feel even more strongly for these amazing animals. I don’t understand how anyone could look at this beautiful mother-daughter pair and not feel that connection. How could any of us do anything that could be harmful to our ape cousins? Yet, it is our actions that could cause these beautiful creatures to be extinct in the wild within the next 5 to 10 years.

This week and going forward, I urge all of our Zoo fans to take action to help save orangutans in the wild. It starts with reading labels on all the products you purchase at the grocery store. Roughly 3 out of 5 products contain some form of palm oil. This can be hidden by being listed as: PKO – Palm Kernel Oil, PKO fractionations: Palm Kernel Stearin (PKs); Palm Kernel Olein (PKOo), PHPKO – Partially hydrogenated Palm Oil, FP(K)O – Fractionated Palm Oil, OPKO – Organic Palm Kernel Oil, Palmitate – Vitamin A or Asorbyl Palmitate, Palmate, Sodium Laureth Sulphate, Sodium Lauryl Sulphates, Sodium dodecyl Sulphate, Elaeis Guineensis, Glyceryl Stearate, Stearic Acid, Steareth -2, Steareth -20, Sodium Lauryl Sulphate, Sodium lauryl sulfoacetate , Hydrated palm glycerides, Sodium isostearoyl lactylaye , Cetyl palmitate and octyl palmitate.

What does palm oil have to do with orangutans? Rainforest habitats where orangutans and many other animals dwell are slashed and burned to make way for palm oil plantations. Sadly, roughly 85% of all palm oil used in manufacturing is sourced from Indonesia and Malaysia where many species, including orangutans are threatened with extinction.

Not all palm oil is bad. There are some companies making sound environmental choices and utilizing sustainable palm oil. This is palm oil that is produced in places where it is not affecting orangutans and other endangered species. The Round Table for Sustainable Palm Oil  is an organization that regulates this. Companies who have joined the roundtable have committed to using only sustainable palm oil in their manufacturing. It is not enough to boycott products that contain “bad” palm oil, but to support the companies that use “good” palm oil. It is also important to let companies know that they should do the right thing and use only palm oil from sustainable sources. Write to these folks and let them know! It works!

Photo by Kelli O’Brien

Come to the Zoo this Saturday, May 11^th for M.O.M. (Missing Orangutan Mothers) Day to learn more.

We will be celebrating our beautiful new baby orangutan and handing out sustainable palm oil wallet cards to help you make responsible product choices. There will be activities for the kids including coloring stations, face painting, docent touch tables, and raffles for orangutan friendly items and a drawing done by one of our orangutans! Donations will be accepted and all proceeds will be contributed to orangutan conservation. Events will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. inside and outside the Zoo’s Main Building.

- Tina Crandall-Gommel, Youth and School Groups Programs Coordinator

Photo by Kelli O’Brien

I have been working full-time as the Conservation Education Coordinator here at the Zoo for the last four years. In this time I have managed many programs, including the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation Butterfly Beltway Program, Scout and Bunk with Beasts Overnights programs, Your Green Backyard Exhibit and workshops and several other tasks.

This year, we’ve mixed things up in the Education Department a bit, which offered me the opportunity to take on a new role, which I’m very excited about. My new position is Youth and School Groups Programs Coordinator. In this new role, I will be overseeing our teen programs as well as tours, career programming, expeditions and animal presentations. I also have the unique opportunity to develop some new programming aimed at teachers; I will be developing some professional development programs for teachers and a distance learning program for classrooms that cannot otherwise come to the Zoo.

Photo by Walter Brooks

I am really looking forward to working with teens in the venue of the Zoo. I have worked with this age group in other capacities and have always found it invigorating. Teens have so much energy and passion for the topics they are most excited about. Working with teens who have chosen the Zoo is an exciting opportunity to develop deeper connections to conservation topics. I am looking forward to seeing their creativity in action as they develop new ways to help the public understand how important it is to help our planet and the animals we share it with.

I am happy to report that you will still see me in a few of my old roles as well. I am still in charge of our on-site recycling efforts, managing our bottle program, Green Gazebo and Go Green! Recycle Rallies. Additionally, I will still be able to hang out in the Dig Zone in our A Step Into Africa Exhibit, my favorite place in the whole Zoo (see my previous blogs)! I also look forward to continuing sharing my love of the Bornean orangutans and the turtles/tortoises in our upcoming Animal Conservation Days on May 11 and May 18, respectively. And from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday is Party for the Planet, a conservation awareness event which melds some of our previous events into one big celebration for Earth Day weekend.

I look forward to seeing you all at the Zoo this Saturday for Party for the Planet!

- Tina Crandall-Gommel, Youth and Schools Groups Program Coordinator

Photos by Kelli O’Brien

…and habitats I have been working at the Zoo, in some fashion, for 9 years this May.

During my tenure here at the Zoo I have done just about every education program that there is, including the Bunk with Beasts, tours, camps and classes and most recently coordinating our Wegmans ZooMobile and Explorers programs.

This year marks a return of my participation in the Daisy Marquis Jones Foundation Butterfly Beltway program. This was the first program I participated in when I started here in 2004. I started as an assistant and now return as the program’s coordinator. I am excited about this opportunity because I love these wonderful insects and have been working with them since college. The Butterfly Beltway is an outreach program designed to increase butterfly habitat, one garden at a time.

Starting in 2002, our Butterfly Beltway program has planted more than 125 gardens across western New York and the Finger Lakes region. Gardens have been planted at senior facilities, special needs centers, schools, businesses, libraries, places of worship and community organizations. By planting gardens, educating the public and releasing butterflies, we hope to create a better world for these important pollinators. These gardens are breeding spots during the summer and rest stops for the Monarch butterfly during the fall migration. Click here to learn more about our Butterfly Beltway program or to request a Butterfly garden planted at a location of your choosing visit!

- Tim Fowler Outreach Coordinator

Making some new fossil casts of prehistoric inhabitants of Olduvai Gorge

While it seems no one to told Mother Nature, Spring Break 2013 has arrived. We are busy here at the Zoo getting ready for the nice weather (which will hopefully come soon)!

Some of the preparations have included improvements to our Dig Zone in A Step Into Africa. Over the winter, I have been making some new fossil casts of prehistoric inhabitants of Olduvai Gorge. New things that kids young and old will be able to unearth this year include several bones from two different species of extinct elephant, a skull and neck from a giraffe, and, my favorite, the over 8-foot-long monitor lizard skeleton – plus a lot more!

As you can see from the pictures, a lot of work goes into this. From hand-making the fossils out of concrete (the only material that would survive our Rochester winters!), painting them with just the right detail, to moving all of that gravel in order to install the fossils, great care is taken to ensure that our visitors will have a fun and exciting time pretending to be paleontologists during their visit.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the Zoo, and especially to seeing all the little budding paleontologists discovering the amazing ancient African animals hidden in our Dig Zone.

- Tina Crandall-Gommel, Youth and School Group Programs Coordinator

Photo by Noelle Sippel

Are you a teen that likes to do more than just “monkey” around? Well, don’t spend your summer just “lion“ around, apply for our ZooTeens Program!

The Zoo is the coolest place to hang out over the summer. You’ll have the opportunity to meet new friends with similar interests as yours; learn about animals and the environment and help the Zoo spread it’s conservation messages in a meaningful way.

Our ZooTeens engage the public in a variety of conservation topics using interactive stations throughout the Zoo. Through the use of biofacts (skulls, pelts, etc.) our teens educate visitors about our Zoo animals, the challenges they are facing and what we can do to help. As the summer progresses, other unique opportunities present themselves to allow teens to expand their experiences. This year, we are excited to be a part of the Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) FrogWatch, a citizen science program to study local frogs. We are looking forward to our ZooTeens taking an active role in this project and we’re sure our teens will find it very rewarding!

Another great benefit to the ZooTeens Program is the ability to network with people in Zoo professions. During the course of the summer, teens will meet many of the staff members here at the Zoo – it’s a great opportunity to witness first-hand the diversity of career options available here.

If you are interested in applying for this great opportunity, please click here for details information and an application. The deadline for applications is April 1, 2013!

- Tina Crandall-Gommel, Youth & School Programs Coordinator

One of the many reasons I like presenting programs on the Wegmans ZooMobile is that it extends the reach of the Zoo. While the Zoo might be on 15.5 acres, our ZooMobile program covers an area of about 8,800 square miles, or an area about the size of New Jersey!

Photos by Kelli O’Brien

Because of this extended outreach, the ZooMobile is able to visit places and people that might not ordinarily get to visit the Zoo. In 2012, we saw over 20,000 people on ZooMobile programs! While the ZooMobile is known for visiting classrooms, we also visit senior living facilities and participate in community events like the Entercom Kid’s Fest that was held this past weekend.

Make sure to think of us for your next community event, fundraiser, scout meeting, senior recreation program, college community building program or classroom visit. We bring the Zoo to you!

- Tim Fowler, Outreach Coordinator

Photo by Walter Brooks

In my blog last month I wrote about my trip to Winter Haven, Florida to attend a professional training course on animal training. The course was put on by Natural Encounters Inc. Now that I have had some time to reflect on my trip and the things I have learned, I wanted to share with you some of the key points of the course and how I plan to apply them at our Zoo.

Power or Positive reinforcement: If an animal does something you like, reward it! Usually, at the Zoo this means with a treat, but it can also be with praise, a scratch or something else the animal really enjoys. Always keep it positive and go at the pace of the animal. Never force them to do anything. This leads to my next key point.

Repetition builds trust: If you continually give an animal reinforcement for performing a behavior over and over again, you will build what the teachers of the course called a “trust bank account.” Just like a real bank, it takes a lot of time to build up a trust account. Make sure that you are always adding to the account, and if you need to “withdraw” from the account, do so only as a last resort. Just like with a real bank account, it is much easier to withdraw a lot at once than it is to deposit a lot at once.

Choice equals empowerment: Giving an animal the opportunity to perform a variety of behaviors, and choose what it would like to do it a very self-rewarding. Just like when you go to a restaurant, you like to have a choice of what to eat. The same goes for an animal. Give them choice in their food, their environment and the behavior they perform. It is very empowering!

Be clear in your communication: Always make sure that when you ask an animal to perform a behavior you are doing it clearly, and if they do the behavior, make sure it is rewarded. We cannot physically talk to our animals (well, maybe a parrot or two!), but we can communicate with our body language and with our reaction to a behavior. So always be aware of what you are communicating to the animal, but also be aware of the animal’s behavior. What are they doing to communicate with you?

Photo by Kelli O’Brien

The five days I spent at the course may have been some of the most productive time I have spent training for my job, and I certainly took more knowledge away from the course than I ever thought possible. I will incorporate the information from the course in training animals in our education collection. These are the animals you see in a number of our educational programs, such as camps, scouts, ZooMobiles (see photo at right) and the summer interpretive programs.

Lastly, I met great animal trainers from all over the world, and built a support group I can go to with questions. It was a truly rewarding experience and I am so grateful to the Zoo for sending me to the course!

- Kenny Nelson, Interpretation Coordinator