Our projects are pretty much the essential part of the program. That's where we learn to research and present in a safe and encouraging environment. It's so important in fact, we almost have a day every week devoted to it, 20% of our whole internship.
Today was one of those days. It was a frustrating day. Mostly because it's hard to consolidated a group of diverse people to one subject and topic that we are all passionate about. I was disappointed because it seemed like our wolf idea was going down the drain. If there are no more wolves to conserve in Texas since they are completely wiped out, then how can we do a conservation project on them? It seemed irrelevant and wasn't really playing into the whole education idea that we all seemed to have. So I was slightly upset, but it gave me hope that maybe my dreams could be achieved, but on a larger scale as part of my life goal to be involved with wolves, however, that's for another day and time.
In the morning we had the Houston Toad Lead Conservationist, Paul, come in and talk to us. He was fantastic. He was so enthusiastic and knowledgeable about this silly little toad that it even inspired me to want to support his program. The Houston Toad is native to Texas, obviously. It lives in dry soil with a lot of brush, near a pond that's usually in a forest or something, so their prime area is probably actually The Woodlands (although we didn't talk about that). They are fairly simple creatures, they eat about 10 times their weight in crickets every day (the Zoo has a cow trying to pay for that), and reproduce a certain time each year where they turn from tadpoles to toads. Some random facts we learned was that they actually swallow with their eyeballs, and their "ribbit" is really more of a trill and it's a very unique call. Paul told us all about his conservation efforts; how he had a captive breeding facility at the Zoo, and went out and tracked or counted toads every year by listening for their call, and talked to landowners about their property and how they can help save the "Native Texan." He was very smart and really interesting to listen to. His tactics for saving this random reptile were not futile, he had breed almost 14,000 toads last year and was waiting to put them out in the wild where he hoped they would succeed. All in all it showed how valuable planning is and how there are millions of different avenues and hoops that we have to jump through to actually save a species, it's never a simple task.
After talking to him, we realized how futile our project on wolves would be. And while we still wanted to do our project on conserving an animal, it was a little more difficult than that. It almost wasn't feasible to try to get Exxon on board a huge project that could take thousands of hours and countless man-power. Plus we would rather educate the public than conserve a species the public hates. We discussed countless ideas, landing on a final one (after going through recycling and clean energy, bleh, over-done topics in my opinion) about educating in schools. But how? Why? Who? When? And what impact would it actually have? How could we really make people passionate about our cause? What was a plausible idea that would sustain itself? We toyed with the idea of writing a teaching plan to introduce endangered species to elementary kids, but I went home skeptical and not all that enthused about the idea.
Sometimes, ideas pan out and are beautiful. Others are not as perfect. Ours is almost a forced idea, an assigned project that we have to come up with in a time crunch. It's hard finding people who are passionate about the same things you are and focusing on a certain topic that will actually reach the public and please the funders. Conservation work is never an easy job, whether it be in the field being eaten by fire ants, or in the office, being rejected by your funders, it requires someone strong, willing, passionate, and persistent.
(This blog was written as if it was Wednesday, May 23, 2012)
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