I never really had pets growing up, thank you allergies! I dissociated
myself from the horse loving harem of little girls because I couldn’t sit on
one without getting hives across my entire body. I bypassed the cute kitten
posters and watched adorable puppies from afar. I wasn’t a big animal person. I
pride myself on my people skills rather than on how well I can reincarnate a modern
day Snow White. This said, my favourite movies as a child included ‘fly away
home’, ‘Free Willy; part 2’ (lets be precise now) and everybody’s childhood
classic, ‘homeward bound’. So maybe a part of me would have love to have been an
animal person, but instead as a teenager I found boys (awkward confession).
Moving swiftly on from animals, I also had no interest in
geography as a subject. Measuring rocks was boring, building volcanoes was
boring and figuring out how many people lived in an urban area compared to a
rural area was, well you guessed it, boring. I had however participated in a
project with the National Theatre where we wrote and performed a whole play
based on global warming. I loved our leaders; one was an acclaimed novelist who
had spent 3 months in the Artic writing about her findings. The other was a
rather eccentric Broadway writer and director. Research was an intrinsic focus
of the project and we ended up meeting with global warming activists, marketers
and scientists. It was interesting, for the most part, but I quickly got lost
in the statistics and graphs and didn’t really understand the immediate importance
of the issue at hand.
“In the end we conserve what we love, we will love only what we
understand, we will understand only what we are taught.” Baba Dioum
For all those people banging their heads against the door
because people aren’t listening about what’s happening to our world well,
although I’m ashamed to admit it, I use to be one of those people. Other things
just mattered more to me. That’s not to say I was a shallow person just that ‘the
environment’ sat on the back burner of my mind. Conservation to me back then
meant, not littering and recycling. Separate your paper from your plastics and
BAM world saved, end of issue, you’ll die a martyr.
And then my life changed, rather dramatically and almost by
accident. I decided to volunteer on a conservation project in Costa Rica. My
reasons didn’t really have much to do with it being a conservation project,
instead I went because unfriendly customers at my multiple Saturday jobs had
put me off of humanity, I wanted to feel the sun on my skin and I wanted to do
something worthwhile, like staring at adorable hatchlings all day long. Gap
Year sorted.
I didn’t have any expectations about my trip, because I didn’t
know what to expect. Did I for instance expect to spend six months on a camp
full and I mean FULL of biologists, zoologists, conservationist, primatologists,
every other animal specialist going and be churned out as a full advocate for every
value that they held near and dear? NO! I was blasé about conservation, and
after becoming a staff member, (my title being a CONSERVATION apprentice, which
I’d laugh at) when new volunteers asked if I was studying biology I’d say “nope
– I’m more of a writer. Basically, the opposite of everyone here”. I was
laughable. But here’s the thing, I was also impressionable. Though I hadn’t had an active interest
before I suddenly found that when you’re thrown in amongst the monkeys, big
cats, snakes and all other creepy crawlies and a conversation about their predicament
starts up whilst eating pinto, you’re eager to learn, and ask every question under
the book. Rather passively I ended up a fountain of knowledge because like
a baby I’d picked up so much from the intelligent and passionate people around
me. I was surprising myself, I’d gone from being naïve and uneducated to being
an ambitious and determined conservationist. That doesn’t mean that I was
suddenly a professor of biology just that I had a firm belief in the cause. And
most of what I was learning was heart breaking.
Since coming home even more environment related issues have
been brought to my attention and are making my heart stop with fear and true
sadness. The western black rhino was declared officially extinct following
reports from the IUCN on November 10th 2011. Tilikum, an Orca or more commonly
known as a killer whale, was tortuously taken from his family, bullied by other
orcas in a dark water enclosure best described as a coffin and then forced to perform
at SeaWorld for his adoring fans. Tilikum, has killed three people including
two trainers. And he is not an isolated case. And I didn’t know about this, and
I wouldn’t have known about this if I hadn’t of watched the recent documentary blackfish, recommended by a friend I
met in Costa Rica.
I felt hurt and guilty after watching that documentary and it’s
prompted me to say something. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not the one to go to if
you have questions about the environment or how these undeniably and timelessly
beautiful creatures are dying at our hands, or how serene landscapes are
changing and drowning because of global warming, like I said I’m new to this. But
as someone who use to not be interested, someone isn’t a scientist, there is
one thing that I can assure you and that’s that this is worth caring about.
"We have the knowledge that
conservation works if executed in a timely manner, yet, without strong
political will in combination with targeted efforts and resources, the wonders
of nature and the services it provides can be lost forever."
And here’s the biggest lesson that I learnt from the people
I met whilst standing side by side, planting a rainforest and taking data on Neotropical
river otters and that’s a message of hope. The greatest moments in our history
are when things changed, when people rallied for the better good, when
politicians cared about making the world better, whether its black history or
the end of a war, change is good. And we want to change the inevitable. We want
to change the outcome for the defenceless, for the sumatran tiger, the polar
bear, the orangutan and the humans. You don’t have to be a scientist, I’m not. You
don’t have to be working in the field or in the middle of a rainforest. You
just have to care, even a little bit counts. And the biggest thing you can do?
You can stay aware of the issues. If
everybody changed the way I did, then there’s nothing stopping the world from
changing too. Life is beautiful, preserve it.
P.S. Don’t just skip over the bolded quotes, their actually
rather poignant, powerful and true.
LEARN MORE RIGHT HERE
(Go on, it’s only one click.)
http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/gpap_home/gpap_solutions/
A big thanks to everyone at Piro who helped me grow and
learn, who I now call my friends and who have inspired me by dedicating their
lives to this cause, I hope you find some relief in knowing you certainly
changed me and my beliefs. Keep up the good work guys! Once you open your eyes,
there’s no going back.
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