Mission: Big Foot – Learning to Walk Softer

You can now help the Assiniboine Park Zoo and the planet at the same time you are learning how to keep some money in your own pockets!

The Zoological Society of Manitoba has teamed up with Planet Partnership® to help our patrons learn how to be more sustainable – and it only takes 45 minutes. Here’s just some questions we’ll answer for you:

What is sustainability and what does it mean to our future?

Is it a fad or a trend?

What are the human contributions to the problem?

Why are the environmental, economic and global consequences important to me?

How can I create a personal action plan for carbon reduction and save money ?

50% of all proceeds benefit our zoo – so tell your neighbors, your co-workers and even your boss to participate in this great program. It’s a win for all of us! Make your pledge to do your part, because, “If Not You, Then Who?”

Here’s how to participate: Go to www.planetpartnership.com

Choose Take the Training

Enter this password:  rfapz25

Enter your credit card information for the registration fee of $15.00 – Remember that 50% comes back to us in support of conservation and education programs at the Assiniboine Park Zoo!

Register your username and password. Write down your username and password so you don’t forget it – you may need it again.

You can watch our cumulative numbers grow on the website, under carbon reduction totals.

Spirit of the Earth Award Winner

I am happy to announce that the Zoo Education Centre was one of the recipients of the 2009 Spirit of the Earth Awards, a project of Manitoba Hydro. The program that we won for is called Aboriginal Animal Teachings.

Aboriginal people have always used storytelling as a way of teaching important lessons to children, as well as entertaining members of their family or community. Elders, both women and men, kept animal legends, their message and morals, alive throughout the generations. It is our hope to help continue to keep these stories and legends alive for future generations, with the Aboriginal Animal Stories program. The objectives of the Aboriginal Animal Teachings program include:

• Introducing people of all ages, especially youth, to indigenous North American animals.
• Creating a connection between art, science and culture through wildlife.
• Introducing people to Aboriginal beliefs, values and stories, especially as they pertain to the natural world.
• Creating an awareness of the value of storytelling as a way of passing information from one generation to another

Spirit of the Earth Awards Program

Manitoba Hydro fosters environmental awareness and encourages initiatives that improve our environment. At the same time, Manitoba Hydro recognizes the significance of Aboriginal people and their culture to the Province of Manitoba. Manitoba Hydro wanted to link these initiatives, and in 2002, introduced a program called Spirit of the Earth Awards. Now in its seventh year, the annual Spirit of the Earth Awards publicly recognizes positive environmental achievements by Aboriginal people or that directly involve Aboriginal people.

The intent of the Spirit of the Earth Awards is to promote environmental awareness and to recognize the culture and history of Aboriginal people.

2009 Award Winners:

The following list includes some wonderful programs that were recognized this year. Congratulations to all of the recipients. Spirit of the Earth Awards were presented on National Aboriginal Day, June 21, 2009.

• Mino Aski (Good Earth) Culture Camps, Misipawistik Cree Nation Health Authority – week-long camps that promote a healthy lifestyle for youth.
• Darryl Nepinak – internationally recognized Aboriginal filmmaker who explores the Anishinabe people and their culture, and uses humour to break down cultural barriers.
• Friendship Garden – Erickson Elementary School, Erickson, MB.
• University of Manitoba Graduation Pow Wow – honours Aboriginal graduates from the University of Manitoba and the University of Winnipeg.
• University College of the North – Aboriginal Midwifery Baccalaureate Program.
• Promoting Métis Culture – Channing, Chelsea and Christie Lavalee, for their collective contributions toward the preservation of Métis culture.
• Zoological Society of Manitoba – Aboriginal animal teachings.
• Urban Circle Training Centre – holistic approach to training and employment for Aboriginal women and men.
• Laura Warenchuk, Buchanan School, Winnipeg – The Spirit of Buchanan School program encourages eco-conscious activities and crafts.
• Traditional Area Advisory Councils (Hollow Water & Black River First Nations) – working on land use and moose management programs with Manitoba Conservation, in consultation with Manitoba Model Forest Inc.

Amur Tigers on the Brink

The following text was taken from http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8128000/8128738.stm. All rights are reserved by the author.
The Amur tiger (Panthera tigris altaica) is also commonly known as the Siberian tiger.

Amur tigers on ‘genetic brink’

Matt Walker, Editor, Earth News

A wild Amur tiger is a rare sight. The world’s largest cat, the Amur tiger, is down to an effective wild population of fewer than 35 individuals, new research has found.

Although up to 500 of the big cats actually survive in the wild, the effective population is a measure of their genetic diversity. That in turn is a good predictor of the Amur tiger’s chances of survival.

The results come from the most complete genetic survey yet of wild Amur tigers, the rarest subspecies of tiger. At the start of the 20th Century, nine subspecies of tiger existed, with a total world population of more than 100,000 individuals.

Human impacts have since caused the extinction of three subspecies, the Javan tiger, Bali tiger and Caspian tiger, and world tiger numbers could now have fallen to fewer than 3000.

The Amur tiger, or Siberian tiger as it is also known, is the largest subspecies which once lived across a large portion of northern China, the Korean peninsula, and the southernmost regions of far east Russia. The Amur tiger most likely derived from the Caspian tiger, recent research has shown.

What is remarkable about the Amur tiger is how much lower the effective population size is than the census size. During the early 20th century, the Amur tiger too was almost driven to extinction, as expanding human settlements, habitat loss and poaching wiped out this biggest of cats from over 90% of its range.

By the 1940s just 20 to 30 individuals survived in the wild. Since then, a ban on hunting and a remarkable conservation effort have slowly helped the Amur tiger recover. Today, up to 500 are thought to survive in the wild, while 421 cats are kept in captivity.

However, the genetic health of the tiger hasn’t improved, according to a new analysis published in Molecular Ecology.

Michael Russello and Philippe Henry of the University of British Columbia, in Kelowna, Canada led a team drawn from universities in Canada, Japan and the US in a bid to analyse the genetic profiles of the remaining wild Amur tigers.

They sampled nuclear DNA found within the scat samples of an estimated 95 individuals found throughout the Amur tiger’s range, likely constituting up to 20% of the remaining population.

The study sampled the amount of variation within the DNA from more tigers, across a broader geographic, than any previous research.

“Although the census population size of Amur tigers is closer to 500 individuals, the population is behaving as if it were the size of 27 to 35 individuals,” says Russello.

That’s the lowest genetic diversity ever recorded for a population of wild tigers.

The effective population of any group of animals will be lower than the number that actually exist, due to factors such as non-breeding individuals or a skewed sex ratio.

“However, what is remarkable about the Amur tiger is how much lower the effective population size is than the census size,” says Russello.

Population split

Another important finding to emerge from the study is that the remaining Amur tigers are segregated into two populations that rarely intermingle.

The majority of Amur tigers live among the slopes of the Russian Sikhote-Alin Mountains, with 20 or fewer living separately in Southwest Primorye in Russia.

The two groups are separated by a corridor of development between Vladivostok and Ussurisk, and the genetic analysis showed that perhaps just three tigers had managed to cross the divide, reducing the effective size of the wild population further.

“There is little sharing of genes across the development corridor, suggesting that these two populations are fairly discrete,” says Russello.

“In actuality, it seems that Amur tigers are residing in two, fairly independent populations on either side of the development corridor between Vladivostok and Ussurisk, further lowering the effective size for each from 26 to 28 for Sikhote-Alin and 2.8 to 11 for Southwest Primorye.”

That means more work needs to be done to open up this barrier segregating the tigers.

If that doesn’t happen, then it’s likely that the Southwest Primorye population will continue to dwindle. That could also kill off the prospect of reintroducing Amur tigers to China, as those in Southwest Primorye are living closest to their former Chinese range.

The news is not all bad for the Amur tiger, however. Russello and Henry’s team also analysed the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of 20 captive Amur tigers, to see if they retained any unique genetic features since lost by the wild tigers.

“There are gene variants found in captivity that no longer persist in the wild,” says Russello, which suggests that the captive program has done a good job of preserving the genetic diversity of the subspecies.

“Now that it is known which individuals possess which gene variants, managers will be able to selectively breed to help preserve the unique and rare gene variants,” says Russello.

“The implication is that this variation may be used to re-infuse the wild population sometime in the future if reintroduction strategies are deemed warranted.”

Conrad the Wisent

I met Conrad back in 1996. He was the most impressive looking bison I had ever seen, and he rivals every other one I’ve seen since. Conrad spent nearly 20 years living at the Assinboine Park Zoo, until his death yesterday July 3, 2009.

My favourite memory of Conrad was when he would decide to wander over to the pond (beside the visitor path) and quietly stand just out of reach of the public, seemingly enjoying their company. At more than 2000 lbs, Conrad easily caught your attention and his absence in the herd will be obvious.

European bison, a.k.a Wisent, were hunted for decades but eventually went extinct in the wild thanks to Russian government sanctioned poaching and WWI. The last truly wild wisent was killed by a poacher in 1921. Thankfully, conservationists immediately started a captive breeding program using zoo animals.  There are currently 200 European bison breeding centres found in 27 countries worldwide. Wisent numbers eventually increased enough to be released back into the wild. At the present time, there are no more than 3000 European bison in the wild – the vast majority of which are found in four reserves in Poland, the largest of which is in the Bialowieska Forest.

The Assiniboine Park Zoo also houses plains bison, another species with a troubled past. Although wisent are smaller in overall size, they have a thickset body shape with a short neck and a pronounced shoulder hump.

Legless & Multi-legged Frogs

Here is an interesting article from BBC News Online that was passed on to me by a zoo member. Scientists think they have resolved one of the most controversial environmental issues of the past decade: the curious case of the missing frogs’ legs. Around the world, frogs are found with missing or misshaped limbs, a striking deformity that many researchers believe is caused by chemical pollution. However, tests on frogs and toads have revealed a more natural, benign cause. The deformed frogs are actually victims of the predatory habits of dragonfly nymphs, which eat the legs of tadpoles.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8116000/8116692.stm

Here are some interesting related articles…

A billion frogs on world’s plates: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7845306.stm

Project launched to fight frog-killing fungus: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30686761/

Ten new amphibian species found in Columbia: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28940168/displaymode/1107/s/2/

 Pollution's effect on the sensitive biology of the frog

Fun Animal Fact Cards Now Online

The Zoological Society’s Education Department created a wonderful set of 16 trading cards, each with a different fun animal fact in 2008. These cards were handed out to kids throughout the summer of ‘08 and then (as a full set) to teachers who took part in a program at the Zoo Education Centre. These cards have since been made into large signs that can now be seen throughout the Assiniboine Park Zoo, incorporated into ads in our local newspapers and are now online!

Please visit http://www.assiniboinepark.ca/images/funanimalfacts.pdf to see them all!

Plastic in our Oceans

Please reduce your plastic use, for the sake of the animals and the earth.

The Garbage Patch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnUjTHB1lvM

World’s Biggest Garbage Dump: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNqzAHGXvs

Ocean of Plastic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBO-c5GMDQ

Not happy about how we’re treating our earth, our oceans and the animals that live in them? Take a deep breath and watch the Earth breathing…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYhgqbcYDFM

New Zoo Geocaches Launched

The Zoological Society of Manitoba and the Manitoba Geocaching Association will be hosting their second annual “Geocaching the Zoo” event tomorrow, June 21, 2009. The weather forcast looks fantastic for a stroll with the family through the zoo to find our 8 new caches. Each cache is themed around the Zoo Education Centre’s current education campaign dubbed: Mission Big Foot.

All of the cache coordinates will be available at www.mbgeocaching.ca and www.geocaching.com as of tomorrow but we encourage everyone to stop by the Zoo Education Centre to meet with other geocachers, representatives of the MGCA and Zoo Society, and to enter a contest for finding locations.

Come and spend the day at the Zoo and learn about geocaching. This year’s theme is Mission: Big Foot!

Date: Sunday, June 21, 2009
Time: 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.

Enter the Zoo though the South Gate and then meet us at the Zoo Education Centre located at N49° 52.122 W097° 14.515. (To your left as you go through the gate)

1:30 – 2:00 p.m.  Introduction to geocaching presented by the Manitoba Geocaching Association.
2:00 – 4:30 p.m.  Search for the new geocaches that will be placed around the Zoo.
4:30 Prize Draw

The MBGA will have a couple of extra GPS units available for those that are interested in participating but do not own a GPS. They will also be on hand to answer any questions you may have about geocaching or the use of your GPS. A brochure and contest form will be available to participants.

Zoo Admission (Plus GST)
Adult – $4.55
Senior – $4.25
Youth (13-17) – $2.95
Child (2-12) – $2.40
Family Day Pass – $16.00
Zoo Society Members – Free

We hope to see you there! But remember – if you can’t make it out on the 21st, the new caches will be active until the spring of 2010, so we encourage you to visit us when ever you can.

Assiniboine Park is a Birder’s Paradise

If you’ve spent any time in the Assiniboine Park or Assiniboine Forest before, you know that birds are some of the most prolific of park users. But it’s only when you begin to compile a list of all the types of birds that can be found in the park that you realize that you’ve stepped into a birding paradise. I love to see the seasonal migrations of songbirds including a dizzying array of warblers, watch the crows put up with the harassment by the blackbirds, hear the rat-tat-tat of the pileated woodpeckers, watch the burst of colour of the American goldfinch, the aerodynamic insect catching of the cliff swallows, and partake in the quiet companionship of the seemingly ever present flycatchers.

For a full list of the species that have been recorded seasonally or year round in the park since 1945, along with pictures and sound bites, please visit: http://www.assiniboinepark.ca/index.php/component/content/section/1?category=1. This list was compiled by three of Manitoba’s top birders and is a wonderful new resource for nature enthusiasts and teachers.

Eco-Friendly Zoo Initiatives

The Zoological Society’s Education Department has been busy promoting Mission Big Foot, as part of our commitment to the “Year of the Carbon Footprint” in 2009. A big part of our messaging this year includes ways in which people can reduce the size of their carbon footprints, i.e. their big feet. We also want to make sure that we practice what we preach and compiled a list of actions that the Assiniboine Park Zoo and the Zoological Society of Manitoba have taken to reduce the size of our footprints.

In addition to reclaiming and reusing as much materials for the old panda building for our new lion enclosure, and encouraging staff to walk or bike to work, we can proudly say that we have been doing the following:
REDUCING, REUSING, RECYCLING & RENEWING
The Zoological Society of Manitoba and Assiniboine Park Zoo are pleased to be contributing to a wilder, greener future for plants and animals by practicing ecologically sensitive business.

Eco-friendly Materials and Products:

• Our Food Services division provides containers and plates made from Bagasse instead of polystyrene, serves drinks in Ecotainer coffee cups and clear corn juice cups, and uses forks, knives and spoons derived from potatoes instead of plastic. All of these products can also be composted.

• Our Zoo Gift Shop uses OXO biodegradable bags.

• The Gift Shop also sells Mr. Ellie Pooh paper products, 100% organic cotton t shirts, purses made of bamboo, coconut and bamboo xylophones, and plantable paper.

Composting:

• Compost bins are used to turn zoo classroom, Animal Tracks Cafe and Terrace 55’s food scraps into soil.

• Large scale composting of organic materials like plant material, hay and bedding, and animal manure saves hundreds of tons of rubbish from entering landfills.

Recycling:

• All paper, glass, plastic and aluminum products are collected and picked up by local companies.

• Fluorescent light bulbs are collected and brought to a special depot for proper disposal.

• All scrap metal is collected for recycling depots.
• We collect used ink jet, laser printer and fax cartridges as well as old cell phones, and send it to companies that recycle the materials.

• We purchase office paper and paper products made from recycled material.

Reusing:

• We actively solicit public donations of used items like fridges, ladders, bicycles, towels, and animal equipment for reuse throughout the zoo to reduce cost and cut back on consumerism.

• Branches and small trees are chipped and the wood chips then used for enclosures and pathways.

Environmental Education:

• Strong environmental and conservation messaging is a vital part of all children, adult and senior programs (including camps, guided tours, and workshops) at the Zoo Education Centre.

• The Zoo Education Centre has joined forces with zoos around North America in 2009 as part of a yearlong initiative to challenge schools, families, companies and governments to reduce the size of their carbon footprint and their negative impacts on the earth.

Reducing Our Consumption and Our Impact:

• Both our Gift Shop and Café use Bio-Life cleaning products that are plant based (renewable), biodegradable and phosphate-free.

• These greener cleaners are being phased-in zoo-wide as is the use of compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy saving devices.

• Timers and sensors are installed in offices, buildings and exhibits so that lights are not left on.

• We accept donations of fresh fruit and veggies from the public for the animals so it does not go to waste as well as donations of other foodstuffs, material and other pertinent items from companies to assist with costs and so the items don’t end up in the landfill.

• Newsletters, renewal and registration forms are emailed instead of sent by regular post whenever possible.

• If brochures, newsletters or marketing materials are produced, they are printed on 100% post-consumer paper with vegetable based inks.

• We use electric golf carts and tour trolleys and staff get around the zoo on bikes.
• We support and participate in anti-litter campaigns.

For more information on how you can reduce your carbon foot print, visit www.planetpartnership.com and take the short training session! Planet Partnership makes a donation to the Zoological Society for every session taken. Use the password rfapz25 to get started!