Multiply and Conquer: A Front Royal
Strategy
by Howard Youth
Rasanayagam "Rudy" Rudran is about as easy to catch as a cheetah at full sprint. "I'm sorry I didn't get back to you sooner," he tells me on the phone. "I understand you sent me an email. I was hours away from the nearest email facility."
Beyond the reach of email? Is that possible these days? It is if you're the conservation training officer for the Conservation and Research Center (CRC). Rudran's job frequently sends him to remote wilderness areas, where he concentrates on training people at the front lines of the battle to save biodiversity. Within hours of returning from a month-long trip to Uganda, however, Rudran called me to fill me in on his work.
When not traveling, Rudran takes to the dewy fields of CRC, in Front Royal, Virginia, where he and his colleagues conduct scientific training as well. Like other researchers and educators at CRC, Rudran gauges his success by the number of people he helps inspire to become dedicated, effective conservationists like himself. "The most satisfying thing to me is the fact that many people out there are providing the multiplier effect," says Rudran. "Starting with one person, now there are many more people promoting wildlife conservation."
From scientific training courses to FONZ Nature Camp, CRC's 3,200 acres provide a base from which this multiplication occurs locally and globally. It is there that Rudran held his first training course 19 years ago, and where FONZ Nature Camp campers recently finished exploring field, stream, and forest. Nestled amid wild, rolling hills, CRC provides perfect habitat not only for wildlife, but for Smithsonian wildlife biologists, physiologists, veterinarians, and educators who work at the center but travel widely to share their work whether in urban school districts or remote rainforests.
Around the World, in 80 Countries and Virginia
Rudran had ventured to distant Uganda to lead a conservation biology and wildlife management course the 58th workshop of its kind taught by Smithsonian Institution (SI) scientists since Rudran helped pioneer the program at CRC. His students, mostly university graduates working as park managers and wildlife biologists, learned how SI scientists map and monitor park vegetation, track animals via radiotelemetry, create inventories of local biodiversity and estimate populations, observe and analyze animal behavior, develop park management strategies, and apply for research grants. Over the years, other training courses have emerged, including 11 focused on zoo biology, nine on environmental education, and others dealing with veterinary medicine and conservation genetics.
Smithsonian scientists are no longer the only trainers teaching these courses. One long-term CRC training goal is to increase the pool of alumni trainers. For example, Rudran collaborated with two Ugandan course alumni now professors at Makerere University to teach his latest course. Other course alumni have taught workshops in their home countries of Brazil, China, India, Malaysia, and Mongolia. By training former students to become full-fledged instructors, CRC scientists leave behind a conservation legacy in countries that are dedicated to protecting their biodiversity.
All told, more than 1,600 wildlife biologists, park managers, zoo curators and personnel, policy makers, and environmental educators from 80 countries have taken CRC training courses. Some took workshops at CRC; others received their training in their home countries, thanks to traveling Smithsonian scientists including, in many cases, Rudran himself.
Training programs are now an integral part of CRC conservation efforts in countries such as Myanmar. There, nine training courses have been held as part of the Chatthin Wildlife Sanctuary Biodiversity Project, an ongoing collaborative research and conservation program that began in 1994. Chatthin is the last Burmese stronghold for Eld's deer (Cervus eldi) and its monsoon forest habitat [see following article]. Although remote, the park is ringed by 19 villages, while three sit within its boundaries. A CRC-led community relations training course assisted park managers in dealing with local conflicts over the deer and the park's other resources. Meanwhile, other training courses helped Burmese biologists perfect their research techniques, conduct ongoing, collaborative research with SI scientists, and hone conservation strategies.
CRC scientists also aim to establish a chain of conservation biology centers in developing countries. These centers will serve as facilities for training and research on local and regional biodiversity, and also as community environmental education centers. SI scientists and educators, who develop the centers' curricula and teaching facilities, are helping to establish new centers in Brazil, China, Malaysia, Mongolia, Thailand, and Uganda.
In addition, CRC provides career development assistance to its most promising course alumni through matching funds for conservation-oriented projects and post-graduate education. "Some [of our alumni] have gone on to become leaders. They're now at the helm, making decisions that promote biodiversity conservation," says Rudran. Such alumni include Tirtha Man Maskey and Almamy Camara, the heads of the wildlife departments of Nepal and the Gambia, and Ullas Karanth, who left an engineering career to study and protect tigers and now manages conservation projects in India for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). "Our program gave him his first formal training in wildlife conservation, from which he went on to get his Ph.D. and become a well-known conservationist," says Rudran. Other alumni include Mohammed Baakar, head of Conservation International's Africa program, Damian Rumiz, WCS's Bolivia country representative, and A.J.T. Johnsingh, Y.V. Jahala, and K. Shankar, senior scientists at the Wildlife Institute of India in Dehra Dun. Several alumni are also faculty members at leading universities in their home countries, helping mold the minds of the next generation of conservationists.
It all began at CRC in 1981. "We discovered that a lot of people were interested in getting training in field biology," says Chris Wemmer, the Zoo's associate director for conservation. "The course was originally given at CRC because we had the field facilities and plenty of wildlife available for study." Trainees trekked into the fields and forests to study white-tailed deer, raccoons, Virginia opossums, rodents, and songbirds. Today, CRC still hosts these training courses, while providing an important stomping ground for aspiring conservationists closer to home.
A Good Neighbor Policy
Acting locally as well as globally, CRC works closely with Virginia school districts in its own backyard. Staff members visit schools as part of community outreach programs, and teachers come to CRC for environmental education training courses based on Smithsonian research. "We try to demystify science and find ways to take the Smithsonian into the classroom," says Research Veterinarian Steve Monfort, who helps direct CRC's education programs. "One way is by connecting scientists directly with teachers so they can speak in the first person: ‘I was with Dr. Monfort in the field when he did this,’ instead of ‘I read that Dr. Monfort did this.’"
One such course is the Forest Biodiversity and Remote Sensing course, a three-day program that was developed by CRC's Education Program Manager Jennifer Buff and CRC wildlife biologist Bill McShea. The course immerses local teachers in the world of conservation science. Teachers sleep at CRC by night and by day learn how to set up, measure, and map tree diversity in school biodiversity plots, and conduct statistical analysis using Smithsonian protocols. They also test hypotheses about environmental trends and interpret remote sensing images including those of their own schools.
The two-year-old program is sponsored by the Virginia Department of Education, with additional support from the Virginia Environmental Endowment Fund. Many teachers have come away from the course inspired, offering up such rave reviews as "I enjoyed the workshop more than any I have ever attended," "Learning from such capable and experienced professionals is a joy," and "I think this program is going to revitalize our school's science program."
Campers, Bugs, and Bears, Oh My!
CRC's wildness and unparalleled resources also draw the younger set each summer, as FONZ Nature Camp begins. Most campers return home with memories to last a lifetime. Just ask 18-year-old naturalist-in-training Asia Hardy. This past summer, while bringing up the rear during a forest hike at CRC, she heard a snort and seconds later saw something she'll never forget. "I turned around and there was a big black bear. Luckily, he saw me and kept on going." A year before, Hardy, a Washington, D.C., resident, could barely tolerate the country life at CRC. Now she relishes her bear sighting and her time outdoors. Elena Lomicky, FONZ's CRC program specialist, has witnessed Asia's transformation. "Last year, at the beginning of camp, she was a counselor in training. She'd be very disturbed by grass, insects, and everything. Within two weeks, she was totally different a real leader and inspiration for the kids," Lomicky says.
The FONZ Nature Camp, now in its sixth year, provides unusual opportunities for children interested in wildlife. "It opens their eyes to so many things," says Lomicky. "Work at the Center continues while camp is going on. We're right in the middle of a hub of world-renowned scientists, and we have access to so many resources ponds, streams, wetlands, and forest. There's field research going on, endangered species programs, and keepers, vets, reproductive physiologists, researchers everything is here."
Campers, fed a steady diet of hikes, campfires, and visits with researchers, seem to be spreading the word. The program has grown to embrace about 210 children per summer, spread over five weeklong sessions for nine- to 12-year-olds. It's too early to tell if any camp alumni will become the shining conservationists of tomorrow (the oldest are just entering college). Hardy might not wind up being a researcher like Rudy Rudran—she plans to pursue a journalism degree—but she and hundreds of campers will always carry a stronger appreciation for nature and conservation thanks to their weeks spent living among CRC's birds, bugs, and bears.
ELIPSE Shines in the Sunshine State
Looking like painted chickens, purple gallinules strut along the shore, careful to side-step sunning alligators. Just beneath the glassy water float four-foot-long gar, primitive, long-nosed and bodied fish. Meanwhile, on the path stands a dumbstruck group of students and teachers. Astride the Anhinga Trail in Everglades National Park, the kids find themselves a world apart from their urban neighborhood, which sits only a freeway drive away.
"Although we're in Miami and right on the Everglades, a lot of our students had never gotten out," explains Mario Castellanos, coordinator for the Environmental Latino Initiative Promoting Science Education, or ELIPSE. A joint effort between the Smithsonian, the Miami Metro Zoo, the Museum of Science, and Fairchild Tropical Gardens, the ELIPSE program links researchers to Miami/Dade County Public Schools. The goal: to promote multi-cultural participation in environmental education through mentoring, community outreach, and teacher training.
Many of the SI scientists participating in this program work at the Smithsonian National Zoo. "This program allows us to provide outreach beyond the Mall, to under-served audiences," says CRC's Monfort, who founded ELIPSE in 1998. "For us, the idea is follow-up. We work with a small number of teachers and provide them with a lot of resources. This way, we create master teachers who become multipliers for teaching students about our scientists' research and practices."
ELIPSE now reaches eight middle schools and one high school, serving a total of about 1,600 students. "We don't force them with the curriculum," says Castellanos. "We ask, 'What are you doing and how can we be a resource?' That's how the ELIPSE program works." So far, Castellanos and SI scientists have visited classrooms and given lectures, slide shows, and demonstrations, taken students and teachers on local field trips, and helped teachers set up neighborhood plots where students and teachers grow native plants and inventory local insect, bird, and plant diversity.
The ELIPSE program rates high both among teachers and students. One high school student reports that she finalized her decision to pursue zoology after a visit and lecture given by National Zoo Amazonia Science Gallery researcher Ryan Valdez. She is now a zoology major at the University of Florida-Gainesville and will likely seek a research internship at CRC next summer.
The program can encourage students struggling with their schoolwork. "We spend a lot of time outside, and it's been an incentive the teachers have used to motivate students. Many students have changed their attitudes about school and environmental issues because of their involvement in the program," says Castellanos. Inspired students may become tomorrow's community leaders or conservationists. In this way, Castellanos's work mirrors that of the globe-trotting Rudran. They are both "multipliers" and members of the far-reaching CRC staff, which reaches out to thousands of people to help save wildlife, from the Everglades to Washington, D.C.'s, backyard and beyond.
-Howard Youth is a Contributing Editor to ZooGoer.
ZooGoer 29(5) 2000. Copyright 2000 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.
