We finalized the date for our club zoo trip for March 19th, so mark it on your calendars! If you are interested in going, sign up below!
**Remember you have to pay your member dues of $5 to go on the trip.

After the somewhat comical technical difficulties on our end, we had an interesting video chat with Tara Easter, who is a scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity in Oregon and holds a B.S. degree in ecology, evolution, and conservation biology from NC State. Her work is centered around endangered species, and she works primarily to try to get animals protected under the Endangered Species Act through petitioning and advocacy. She also assists in tracking the status of currently listed species, as well as researches species with potential to be listed. Her work is extremely important when it comes to the business of poaching and trade of exotic animals between countries. A special shout out to Tara for co-founding the NCSU Roots and Shoots Club!

We had Lisa Mills join us as our guest speaker, who is an Outreach Specialist within the College of Natural Resources. She spoke about her project called Elephants on the Line, which focuses on mitigating human-elephant conflict through community stewardship. This work focuses on Asian elephants, particularly those that occur along the India-Bhutan border where H-E conflict tends to be high. Through this program, many local boys were trained in camera and GPS tracking unit use, and they are the ones who do the community data collection, which is important for a sustainable conservation program abroad. She also spoke briefly about the Maasai Twiga Tracker Teens program that is stationed in Africa and is focused on giraffe conservation. This program allows local teenagers to complete population studies simply by using photography since giraffes have unique patterns, which is similar to humans having unique fingerprints. She does have internships available, so if anyone is interested in her work, contact her at lrmills2@ncsu.edu!

Check out this message from Katie Cupp!

Greetings students!

My name is Katie Cupp, I am a graduate student studying zoology and nonprofit management. I’m getting together a group of 12 students who will be traveling with International Student Volunteers to South Africa! ISV is a non-profit that organizes life-changing volunteer abroad programs for university students. If this opportunity interests you, please contact me as soon as possible so I can reserve one of the 12 spaces for you.

During the first two weeks, our students will be doing volunteer work in conservation. We could be doing things like working hands on with cheetahs, animal habitat mapping, or even educating the locals in sustainable farming techniques.

During the second two weeks, students will travel all throughout South Africa, and even visit the surrounding countries of Swaziland and Mozambique. On the adventure tour, you will have the opportunity to go…

 Snorkeling and scuba diving with whale sharks, dolphins and manta rays in Mozambique

 Cultural tour of a Swazi village in Swaziland

 Exploring local markets, museums and cultural highlights

 Wildlife safaris in national parks, including Kruger National Park

 Moholoholo wildlife sanctuary

 Visiting an elephant sanctuary

 Breathtaking drive along the Panoramic Route to Blyde River Canyon.



There are even other activities that can be added with our optional activities package! This program is a wonderful way to get out of the classroom and have some hands-on educational experiences throughout the 4 weeks, students will be learning all about the communities, ecosystems, and animals with which they are interacting! Furthermore, it gives you an opportunity to do something meaningful with their summer while exploring another culture and country.

I traveled abroad this summer and it was the most amazing experience, I absolutely recommend South Africa to any student looking to volunteer abroad. Please come out to our info meeting or fill out an application to return to me if you are interested in any programs. This program is an amazing opportunity and will fill up fast.

One amazing benefit to ISV is once you are an alumni of the program you can recruit students and travel for FREE in future years. Be sure to check us out if you are interested in nonprofits, volunteering, conservation, or travel. This is an amazing program that can even be done for credit!

Please use group code USA-NC-UL008 when applying.


This video will help show you more about what we do. Our website, isvolunteers.org will give you specific information about each country, as well as a day to day itinerary.





Best,

Katie Cupp

kcupp@ncsu.edu

Thanks to those who came out to volunteer at Wedge Community Garden! We had a great time cleaning the garden beds, picking tomatoes, and pulling up stinkhorns (ew).

Dr. Corinne Kendall gave an outstanding presentation for Roots and Shoots. She is the Assistant Curator of Conservation and manages NC Zoo-based research programs, but has done extensive work in Africa with African Elephants, gorillas, chimpanzees, and her speciality: the African Vulture. She described African Vultures as the "Soap of the Savannah," since the vultures remove decaying animals and therefore disease. These vultures are facing a 50% decline in population because they are ingesting poison from animals that were killed by pesticides. The solution? Attach a satellite tracker to the vultures in order to monitor them, find the source of the poison, and hopefully eradicate the problem. The trackers send Dr. Kendall messages with the vultures location, so she is essentially texting vultures. Dr. Corinne Kendall not only receives text messages from vultures, but also works in the NC Zoo, which works with species in North America such as Hellbenders and the Pine Barrens tree frog. Radio transmitters are placed on the tree frogs as backpacks to track them as a representative for all amphibians as their surroundings are burned. Further, Dr. Kendall has been involved in research at the zoo such as studies on body composition of elephants and night-time behavior of elephants.

If you are interested in working with Dr. Corinne Kendall, there are internship opportunities at NC Zoo! Email corinne.kendall@nczoo.org for more information.

This Thursday, we will have Dr. Corinne Kendall from North Carolina Zoo speaking with us about the North Carolina Zoo Conservation program. Dr. Kendall is the Assistant Conservation and Research Curator at the North Carolina Zoo and has done some outstanding research with vultures and hippos!

She received her Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University where she studied African vulture biology and conservation. Her passion for conservation and education have taken her all over the world and she has worked with several different organizations including Columbia University, Bronx Zoo, American Museum of Natural History, and Houston Zoo in both teaching and research capacities. Her current position allows her to continue conservation work on vultures in Tanzania, oversee a conservation education program in Uganda, work with undergraduates conducting studies at the zoo, and to continue teaching with Project Dragonfly. 

This is a University Scholar's event! No sign-up is required.

Please RSVP!