Project Summaries

JAGUAR TEAM
The EWCL “Team Jaguar” aims to support the conservation of the U.S./Mexico borderlands jaguar population by launching a public awareness campaign in Taos and Santa Fe, New Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; and the Monterey Peninsula, Marin County, and Palo Alto regions in California. The team has created a campaign with BriteVision Media to design and distribute 100,000 coffee sleeves in the aforementioned geographic areas. These sleeves will feature attractive jaguar graphics, brief information about jaguar conservation and the URL of the Northern Jaguar Project (NJP) web site where users can donate money to fund habitat acquisition and restoration activities in Mexico. In conjunction with the distribution of the jaguar coffee sleeves in these cafes, members of Team Jaguar will travel to each of these areas, in teams of two, to launch a more extensive public awareness and outreach campaign. 

AMPHIBIAN TEAM
The EWCL Amphibian Project Team (APT) is working in collaboration with Amphibian Ark (AArk) to address the global amphibian extinction crisis.  APT's goals are to protect one amphibian species from the threat of extinction (a frog in Latin America) and to raise awareness about the issue.  The team will do this by supporting a zoo or other qualified conservation organization in Latin America - where the need is most urgent - in setting up a captive breeding program for one critically endangered amphibian species.  APT will provide the chosen institution with financial support (AArk will provide the technical support) necessary to establish the program.  In tandem with the ex situ component of the project we will implement an education and awareness program by providing elementary school teachers in the U.S. with amphibian educational materials to incorporate into their existing classroom curriculum. 

PANGOLIN TEAM
The EWCL Pangolin Conservation Support Initiative (PCSI), in partnership with Conservation International-Cambodia (CI), is organizing and seeking funding to implement a two–day training workshop in the Cardamom Mountain region of Southwest Cambodia for conservation stakeholders to further existing efforts to combat the illegal trade in Asian pangolins.  Tens of thousands of illegally harvested and marketed pangolins are seized by officials each year from poachers and traders responding to unceasing demand, principally from China, for pangolin meat, blood, skin and scales. The workshop will provide information about aspects of pangolin conservation including: field identification and natural history, national and international wildlife protection laws; confiscation and survival protocols, repatriation and the role of customs, border control and law enforcement.

OKAPI TEAM
The EWCL okapi project group will help create a conservation education video and accompanying booklet that will focus on highlighting the importance of invaluable, and increasingly exploited, wildlife and natural resources in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Okapi Wildlife Reserve (OWR) - using Okapi as a flagship species. For the project, the team will send the OWR’s education director to the International Conservation & Education Fund’s training facility in Brazzaville, Congo. There, he will learn to compile and edit video footage he has gathered into a complete conservation video addressing conservation issues relevant to the area, as well as evaluation methods. The education director will disseminate the video and booklet and evaluate the local people’s attitudes and reactions in the southeastern region of the reserve, where illegal immigration is placing an added burden on the natural resources.