Welcome
Reflection Essay
Endangered species in specific elephants will always be my passion. I believe that like any other endangered species that need our help, elephants are what I am most drawn to. In the assignment, profiling a working professional, we were tasked with explaining why this professional in our field of study became a person of interest to us. I chose Dr. Jane Goodall, who chose to focus on the chimpanzee. The reason I chose her is like her, I want to focus on the elephant. In specific the alarming concern with extinction, the behaviors, the mannerisms, the reason that elephants are the way they are, and how I can make a difference in their lives.
In my autobiography from week four I reflected back to my life as a child. How I felt most at home within the forest in northern California. I think the reason I have chosen to follow my career path in helping animals is because elephants spend most of their time in the forest. While the geographical location isn’t exact, the two parallel one another. Like the elephant I belong in the forest. I stated in my autobiography that the forest was my escape. We need to make the forest the home and escape for our elephants again. I believe they should be in their natural habitat and not forced out because of illegal activities or global change.
In this portfolio I have added pictures along with the corresponding text/project. They appear in order of the project. Some I used
I enjoyed this ePortfolio project. I don’t think that omitting any portion of the content I added would make it less beneficial. In fact, I could add more and I hope that I will be adding more throughout my career as a student at Unity College. I wish that I could change the way one of my pictures was uploaded. I tried to edit the picture with a different editing program tool and no matter what I did it didn’t make the picture any clearer. I thought about removing the picture and choosing another however, for the Intellectual Biography I wanted to add a photo I took myself that had an aerial view of the Redwood Forest.
While the ePortfolio process is indeed time consuming I can see myself utilizing it in the future. It is a perfect way to showcase your accomplishments, and what led you to the decision to pursue your career path of your choice. Any employer can see that you have taken the time to research your field of study, and put forth the effort in doing so by showcasing it within this ePortfolio. I believe by using this I will be able to obtain the job I desire once I am finished with my degree.
Intellectual Autobiography
Growing up in the northern California redwoods, I had the experience of a hands-on education. Oftentimes, our field trips consisted of spending time exploring in the woods. We would learn about all the different ecosystems that existed in the redwoods one trip, while taking an ocean trip the next to help clean up the litter that was on the beach. I loved my childhood and how my education out there included how important it is to take care of the environment. My love of nature started there. To any kid, it is fun to have a field trip for the day, but for all of us, we knew that it was what we needed to do. We left grade school knowing that taking care of the earth is of the utmost importance.
Fast forward more than 20 years later, and I am still that kid who enjoys her time in the woods, enjoys seeing the ocean or even the sand without the litter of man, enjoys the fresh air I breathe out there because the environment is important, and enjoys the animal life that you encounter or the trips to the third cleanest river in the world. I never realized just how happy and serene my childhood was. While the ways of the world soured me even then, the thought of being in nature was my escape. Often, I tell people that I have a spiritual connection to the ocean and to California. That connection is my love for nature and all the beautiful scenes that California offers.
I was on a path before this one that wasn’t wrong. However, it wasn’t what I am passionate about anymore. Yes, I acknowledged that I have the gift of music, but just as I stated above, nature is my home. It grounds me and I feel the most needed within it.
With all of the wildfires and natural disasters on a higher scale that this world has been experiencing lately, I feel like if I don’t try to help now, what am I really doing with my life? I think back to my childhood again and wonder what went wrong. Did my classmates stop caring? That can’t be because I still do, so they must. Was it not as pleasurable for them as it is for me? Does taking care of the very thing we walk on and breathe on day in and day out not matter? I kept asking myself these questions, all the while running into roadblock after roadblock with music. At that moment, it dawned on me. What if I don’t belong in music? It was a childhood passion and dream that, while I still have the talent, wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life.
For the last 10 years, I have been focused on elephants, the extinction rate, and the reason why they are hunted. Why are animals a hot commodity? I need to know how I can fix the root issue, thereby stopping the extinction rate. At that moment, I knew I needed to switch my major. I poured myself into that research like water to a sponge and the more and more I found, the more I wanted to focus on it. The roadblocks that I was running into with music were because my heart wasn’t there. My heart has always been in the forest. I am still that same little girl taking a field trip with my class. We have to get people excited about taking care of the world. I want to be that person that little kids come up to and learn from. I want someone to look at me the way I must've looked at my grade school teachers when we were exploring nature.
A few years back, I took my residents to a local nature center. There, we learned about the local bugs we have in our area. The bird types, the lady presenting the live animal interaction of the local reptiles and various other bugs brought me back to that same comfort space. I knew then that I wanted to work there. I definitely wanted to stay working with my residents but I also wanted to work at our nature center around my other position. I needed to learn more about the area I was living in and I so desperately wanted to take care of the animals/reptiles that are there. Unfortunately, when the pandemic hit, our nature center shut down for quite some time. When time came to reopen it would have conflicted with my other position in that we also held weddings and venue parties out there and I couldn’t take the chance of exposing the elderly I work with. My boss there assured me that I could come back anytime I felt it was safe enough because “It's not everyday I find someone as passionate and thorough with these animals as you are. We are going to miss you,” she said.
For the past five years, I have played an active role in the World Wildlife Fund Panda Ambassador program. We are a group of activists who try to educate our local communities and through our network meetings every month that have allotted me some very neat experiences. I’ve had guest speakers who are already in the field in which I plan to work. I also participated in my very first WWF Lobby Day 2021. I have had the experience and it only further solidified my passion for this earth. Being surrounded by like minds on the same path of good for our planet has truly been the most inspiring and life changing experience for me. We were trained for Lobby Day the three days prior to the day of. This year was different than prior years in that it was all virtual. It wasn’t different for me though since my full-time position conflicts with the location and time of the year lobby day occurs, I wasn’t ever able to attend in years prior. All of my fellow ambassador colleagues kept talking about how different it was and that they hoped that we could all meet in person this next year. During training, we had mock interviews with full-time employees for WWF and that was the most amazing experience so far in my life. I think the turning point in that whole day was when an assistant to one of the senators we were meeting with said “Jessica, your plea and speech about why these funds for wildlife are needed make me want to change my whole career path. I want to be a Wildlife Conservationist,” he said. Of course, we had people working for WWF in those meetings alongside the ambassadors and I felt accomplished. I felt like my plight, my speech, my research prior to that speech that day for animals, especially those that are on the endangered list, was finally heard by someone. I felt like I made a difference that day. Privately, I was told that I did. He had the same exact look on his face that I got when exploring nature.
March 9th, 2021, was the day that my passion and ability to speak that passion to the right people came together. If you can change one person's mind about their entire career choice, why would I spend one more second doing anything but this?
My freshman year of college, I took speech. It is a requirement for any degree and I like to talk, therefore, I wasn’t upset by the fact that it was a requirement. I enjoyed it. Our speech professor assigned us a persuasive speech assignment. “Write what you are passionate about,” she said. At that point I was majoring in music, therefore, one would think that obviously that is what I am going to choose. Endangered elephants and the poaching issues we face was my speech. I included a Google slide presentation with it and some of the pictures on there were really hard, heartbreaking, for my professor and my fellow classmates to see. I knew that I had to convince them that it is a real problem. While it might be hard to see everyone needed to know that it was real. In that slide presentation, I attached gruesome pictures of elephants that were dead, the aftermath of poaching. I was able to find a video and attached that as well. I had some of my classmates in tears. The gasps across the room and the silence as they were listening was very telling. The passion in my voice and the presentation itself was graded and I was shocked when it was returned with 110% written at the top. My professor asked why aren’t you majoring in animal rights, or biology?
Looking back, I know why I was going down the career path that I was and why I answered her because I love music and I have a talent. It was the safe choice for me. Safe in knowing that I have never been a math person therefore, biology, math, most sciences will be difficult, not impossible, but difficult and I will need to work hard to keep up. It's not that I lack the knowledge. It's that I am simply not a math brain. I am tired of taking the path that is comfortable because of one very small obstacle. If I am that passionate about animals, then that passion is what will get me through math class. That passion is what will get me through the times in biology when I feel a bit lost. It is that voice inside me that I will hear “keep going, you are doing this for the elephants.” I just keep reminding myself of that little girl. I keep reminding myself of how possibly I could be in Africa one day at a Wildlife Sanctuary learning and educating others while in the field amongst them. It's the videos of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, Kenya that I watch when I feel like things are hard. I know I will get there. I know that Wildlife Conservation is where I belong.
Doing the right thing for the world’s most vulnerable is my passion. They do not have a voice. Who will be the voice for them? I value doing what is right by animals. I value doing what is right and I know I am needed for. Lastly, I value everything I was taught as a young kid in grade school. Without that teaching, I would like to think I would still be here. But I am so glad I don’t have to wonder if I would make the same decision to save this earth one animal at a time. After all, it is the right thing to do.
Capstone Proposal
What is the history of this issue? Endangered species have a long, tortured history. In specific, endangered animals are a direct result of the ecosystem or a poaching issue. “Illegal exploitation threatens the survival of many species, and anti-poaching legislation ("protection on paper") does not protect species. State enforcement is needed to support and supplement the formal status of endangered species, but state enforcement can be a source of instability leading to the demise of species of ad hoc rules that are followed blindly.” (Erwin H. Bulte, & G. Cornelis van Kooten).
Do people have different perspectives on this issue? Where do these perspectives seem to come from? Greedy poachers have very different views on this matter. Unfortunately, people with “exoctic” tastebuds also have different perspectives on this issue and find it perfectly okay to kill off or to try to kill off species. Most of these perspectives come from greed and not caring about the world around them. Most people don’t take the time to understand that we need every species in order for this world to survive. “When forest elephants eat, they create gaps in the vegetation. These gaps allow new plants to grow and create pathways for other smaller animals to use. They are also one of the major ways in which trees disperse their seeds; some species rely entirely upon elephants for seed dispersal.” (Save The Elephants).
How has this issue been represented (in art, literature, social media, popular culture, professional discourses, public discourses)? Why has it been represented in this way? The best representation was at the Wildlife Film Festival in 2016 when this video was introduced. The picture that accurately represents this issue is on this website. It is a representation of poaching “Nick Brandt; Line of Rangers Holding the Tusks of Elephants Killed at the Hands of Man, Amboseli, from the book Across the Ravaged Land, 2011; Archival pigment print, 44 x 78 in. Courtesy of the artist.” Through art, especially with animal and plant life, one can depict the devastation that is going on while also showing a real need for action on the matter.
The only way we are going to stop the destruction of wildlife habitats and species is through collaboration. We, as a whole, have to care about our planet enough and the wildlife that dwell within to take a stand, fight for them in turn, that is fighting for our own existence.
In my research, I found several avenues that are worth exploring to help combat the problem of wildlife poaching. One worth exploring is the need for more law enforcement. Having police or more ranger presence in the forest-dwelling areas across Africa and in general more protections for these elephants, both savannah- and forest-dwelling species, would be a start. "The decline of the forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) is especially worrying. While savanna elephant populations can bounce back given sufficient protection, the forest elephant is likely to recover much more slowly. Law enforcement is also more problematic in many Central African countries, which are home to the forest elephant," he added.” (Down To Earth). Like any wild animal, elephants help fuel the ecosystem. I found in my research that “When forest elephants eat, they create gaps in the vegetation. These gaps allow new plants to grow and create pathways for other smaller animals to use. They are also one of the major ways in which trees disperse their seeds; some species rely entirely upon elephants for seed dispersal.” (Save The Elephants). Therefore, elephants are essential for seed dispersal. To eradicate the elephant population would be detrimental to the world and several species..
I was fortunate to be a part of World Wildlife Fund’s Lobby Day 2021 as a Panda Ambassador of WWF. With that role, I was able to lobby for funds for Wildlife protections, continued funds for our rangers in these areas, environmental protections, conservation studies, and I was able to share some of my experience and knowledge with these representatives and senators. I shared that wildlife trafficking is a national security issue in that most traffickers are a part of terrorist groups. Also, trafficking wildlife is what landed us in this global pandemic. While scientists aren’t sure exactly which animal, pangolin or monkey, that this originated from in the wet market, had the wildlife trade and trafficking not been in existence, we most likely wouldn’t be going through this. “Pandemic risk can be significantly lowered by reducing the human activities that drive the loss of biodiversity, by greater conservation of protected areas, and through measures that reduce unsustainable exploitation of high biodiversity regions.” (5 reasons why wildlife conservation has no alternative).
We need to invest money into not only the future of our wildlife but also the future of our world. “We need Plant-eating wild animals because they reduce the amount of grass that can fuel fires through grazing. Furthermore, large wild grass-eaters such as elephants, zebras, rhinos and camels do not produce as much methane, a potent greenhouse gas, as domestic livestock do.” (5 reasons why wildlife conservation has no alternative). Yet, they are tearing down the rainforests to raise cattle for the beef market. “Wildlife can also help forests to store carbon more efficiently. Many tree species in tropical rainforests rely on animals like elephants and toucans to eat their large, fleshy fruits, and so they help disperse seeds. We absolutely need wildlife to sustain our earth.” (5 reasons why wildlife conservation has no alternative).
One of the most influential and pivoting points in my decision to fight for animal rights was when I watched the video on Youtube, “Dream,” which was made for the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, I knew at that moment I was needed. We are all needed to help the animals of this world survive and to protect them against the greed and suffering they have experienced at the hands of people. The picture of the rangers holding tusks of slaughtered elephants was also a pivotal moment in my decision making. We absolutely cannot stand idly by anymore and let this world be taken over with greed and suffering. The wildlife need our help. They cannot talk. They do have emotions and they are feeling, living beings. They deserve to live in peace and they deserve the life they were given.
In watching a video advertised by WWF, the question was posed, “What’s more important? Stopping a mass extinction or stabilizing the climate? It's a trick question because neither can succeed without the other. Mass extinctions are driven by rapid and extreme changes to Earth’s climate. To prevent the next mass extinction, we have to stop producing greenhouse gases that are heating up the earth. Stabilizing our climate requires lots of biodiversity. Trees, grasses, plankton, all soak carbon from the air and healthy habitats lock that carbon away in soils and sediments. So, nature is our greatest ally in restoring a stable climate. It's our planet. We can restore nature to stabilize the climate and stop a mass extinction.” (Our Planet). Therefore, extinction is a two-factor situation. It is not only poaching. It is also greenhouse gases and the destruction of our natural resources that help prevent that.
If we can present an alternative to this awful idea that there is a need for ivory, for exotic meats, for tearing down our rainforests, for slaughtering our animals and in turn harming the very ecosystem that we need, then we will be ahead of this issue. Alternative sources are needed. There are many alternatives for ivory. There are many alternatives to palm oil, including the combination of rapeseed and coconut oil, a replacement which will not contribute to the extinction of the orangutan. We must find alternatives to these products before our world crumbles around us and diminishes the very ground we walk on, the air we breathe, and the animals with which we share this world.
Volunteer Experience
I have been a Panda Ambassador for WWF for several years now. March 9th, 2021 I was able to participate in my first Virtual Lobby Day. Lobbying for funds for for all wildlife projects (animals, plants, the entire world), was not only a great experience it was a passion and I hope to continue to do this type of work with my degree. #FundNature
Brief Description of The Panda Ambassador Program
"The Panda Ambassador program is the ultimate next level of engagement for those committed to saving wildlife and the environment while supporting WWF. Your enthusiasm, ideas, and unique perspective, plus our worldwide reach and expertise, equals an unstoppable force for good. Together we can make a real, lasting impact on the future of our planet.
Panda Ambassadors are on the frontlines of environmental activism, leading their communities to engage the public and inspire real change. Panda Ambassadors host fun and educational events and activities, lead groups in marches and protests, and meet with politicians and business leaders.
We’re always looking for people who are ready to lead an environmental movement today, and who might just be leading the country tomorrow. If you think you’ve got what it takes, apply today."
Credit
Brandt, N. (n.d.). Endangered Species: Artists on the frontline of Biodiversity. Whatcom Museum. https://www.whatcommuseum.org/exhibition/endangered-species/ (Wimmerlin, 2018)
Bulte, E. H., & Van Kooten, G. C. (2001). State Intervention to Protect Endangered Species: Why History and Bad Luck Matter. Conservation Biology, 15(6), 1. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3061280?seq=1
Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety. (2021, March 3). 5 Reasons Why Wildlife Conservation Has No Alternative. International Climate Initiative (IKI). https://www.international-climate-initiative.com/en/news/article/5_reasons_why_wildlife_conservation_has_no_alternative
Finley, J. (2018, March 2). Fallen Timber. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/FfGSxv4lITs?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink
HT Digital Streams Ltd. (2021, March 26). Poaching, habitat loss push Africa's elephants to the brink. Gale General Onefile, 1. https://go-gale-com.proxy1.unity.edu/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&u=maine_uc&id=GALE%7CA656378325&v=2.1&it=r&sid=ebsco
Klerk, G. D. (2019, November 20). A mother elephant with all the elegance and power she needs to rule the lands. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/FhbyES4BjG8?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink
Lazarus, J. (2021, March 11). Virtual Lobby Day. (private group on Facebook, WWF Panda Ambassadors).
Netflix (Executive Producer). (2019). Our Planet [TV series]. Silverback Films. https://www.netflix.com/title/80049832
Robbie, A. (2018, March 21). Follow the Leader. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/BuQ1RZckYW4?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink
Save the Elephants. (2016). Why Are Elephants Important. Save The Elephants. https://www.savetheelephants.org/about-elephants-2-3-2/importance-of-elephants/
Treviso, C. (2021, March 9). Team Illinois Class of 2021 #FundNature. (Private Group on Facebook, WWF Panda Ambassadors).
Vick, J. N. (2011, May 23). The Redwood Forest.
Vick, J. N., & Beyer, N. C. (2011, May 23). A Glimpse Of Heaven.
Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, Bergman, N., Merchant, R., O'Meara, K., & Altman, T. (Directors). (2016). Dream [Film]. https://youtu.be/RjMzXykfbm8
Wimmerlin, J. (2018, January 23). Touch This. Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/Ypv-kNjcnDA
World Wildlife Fund. (2021). And Now You're Ready To Do More. WWF Panda Ambassadors Program. https://support.worldwildlife.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=PandaAmbassadors
Thank you!