Wolf Awareness Week Poster: A History of Collaboration World Wolf Congress Education to Foster Coexistence
Upper Great Lakes region: Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, USA
Pam Troxell, Coordinator, Timber Wolf Alliance (TWA) Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute, Northland College, Ashland, Wisconsin USA Dorothy McLeer, TWA Advisory Council Steve Schaub, TWA Advisory Council Nancy Warren, TWA Advisory Council Upper Great Lakes Regional Posters
1991
1989
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1992 1994
The Beginning Timber Wolf Alliance (TWA) was founded in 1987 when Wisconsin was developing a wolf recovery plan. TWA’s mission was and still is to increase and improve public awareness and acceptance of wolves and their ecological role by bringing accurate information about wolves to the general public. Wolf Awareness Week posters are one of TWA’s hallmark education tools. In 1989 TWA, a fledging organization, was seeking ways to raise funds for education materials, such as classroom curriculum and slideshows on wolves, and to also build awareness about the need to recover wolves in the state. TWA created a wolf poster that did both. TWA sought out people and organizations interested in donating at least $25 to support the educational activities of the Alliance. Join the Pack – Support
Timber Wolf Recovery-We Did! poster listed the names of the first 425 people and organizations that donated. 5,000 posters were printed and distributed to public places throughout Wisconsin.
1998
1996
What Came Next
And Then
The success of the project was not forgotten. In the following year, 1990, a collaboration between TWA, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and the Chequamegon/Nicolet National Forest brought about the first-ever Wolf Awareness Week poster. Artist Al Agnew, generously donated artwork to showcase on the poster. Simultaneously, TWA encouraged the Governor of Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson, to sign into declaration, the third week of October as Wolf Awareness Week, this date targeted to educate deer hunters hitting the woods during deer-gun hunting season the next month—a time when wolves were most likely to be killed. By 1991, the state of Michigan, joined Wisconsin with a similar gubernatorial proclamation and additional sponsors—U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Michigan Department of Natural Resources and t Hiawatha and Ottawa National Forests— joined in to distribute over 10,000 posters.
The Environmental Education model is based on a continuum from basic awareness to personal action (awareness, knowledge, attitudes and values, action skills, action experience) with the ultimate goal of developing a citizenry with skills needed to participate in the decision-making processes that affect the environment. In 1995, based on this model, TWA expanded the awareness of the poster into the more educational arena, by providing timely information about wolf populations, wolf range and behavior in the Upper Great Lakes region on the backside of the poster.
1999
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National Platform
Today
Outcomes
In 1998, with interest growing in Wolf Awareness Week by leading national environmental organizations and huge financial support and guidance from the U.S. Forest Service, Timber Wolf Alliance took the established and successful model of the Upper Great Lakes regional poster and expanded it to a national level. 25 agencies and organizations from around the country including: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Defenders of Wildlife, National Wildlife Federation and smaller, but equally important, regional organizations such as: Wolf Song of Alaska and Maine Wolf Coalition sponsored and helped distribute 50,000 posters across the nation. In 2000, with support from four key national sponsors, TWA once again expanded the project. In collaboration with Wolf Park, an education organization based in Indiana, TWA produced and distributed 50,000 kids’ educational activity flyers, a companion to the national poster.
Since the early days, support from state and federal agencies, and private education organizations has grown given TWA the opportunity to produce this very visible and useful poster annually. Currently, 25 groups sponsor the Upper Great Lakes regional poster—over 40,000 posters have been printed in 2003 and distributed around the region.
The Wolf Awareness Week poster has proved to be an educational tool, that:
31 groups sponsor the National poster—over 30,000 posters have been printed and distributed nationwide this year.
National Wolf Awareness Week Posters 2000
2002
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2002
Provides timely, science-based information about wolves of the U.S. to a wide range of audiences across the country; Supplies information in a useful format, freeof-charge to schools, libraries and other educational facilities who otherwise may not be able to receive the information due to budget constraints; Unites a strong collaboration of organizations with diverse goals, yet connected together with the same mission of returning wolves to places where they can be sustained.