MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR COMMUNITY
CJ EXTRA WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 2015 | The Topeka Capital-Journal
Saving species can start at home ‘‘
We have endangered species in our country, and we have endangered species right here in our state. It’s important we give them the attention they need to preserve those species.” DENNIS DINWIDDIE
Topeka Zoo to participate in World Endangered Species Day By Emily DeShazer
emily.deshazer@cjonline.com
Although endangered species and the dwindling number of elephants, gorillas, giraffes and tigers and many other animals in the world can be depressing to think about, the Topeka Zoo hopes to remind people that there still are things people can do to help the situation. Saturday, May 16 is World Endangered Species Day, and from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. the zoo — which is home to 13 endangered species — will have keeper chats, educational booths, scavenger hunts, face painting and more. Dennis Dinwiddie, curator of education and conservation, says the problem isn’t unique to countries outside the United States — there are 59 species listed as threatened or endangered in Kansas. The lifelong Topekan says one of the most important things people can do is not to buy, sell or trade products made from endangered species — especially abroad — to eliminate the demand for
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EMILY DESHAZER/THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Dennis Dinwiddie, curator of education and conservation at the Topeka Zoo, says while endangered species is a serious situation, there is hope and there are steps people can take to help them all over the world.
animal products. Dinwiddie sat down to talk with The Topeka Capital-Journal to talk about what visitors to the zoo can expect on World Endangered Species Day and what people can do to help. Q: What is one thing you will have at the zoo for World Endangered Species Day? Dinwiddie: One of the biggest challenges (endangered species) face is when people who travel overseas — where you can still purchase parts of those animals — travel back into the United States with them, not realizing, we hope, that you can’t have that and you shouldn’t have bought that in the first place because that’s an endangered species. We’re going to have a border station up just like one you might find at an airport on the border re-entering the United States, and we’ll have our customs agents who are checking the luggage. We provide the luggage that has things in it that aren’t legal to transport back to the United States. The kids or the guests become the border agents, and you have to find all of it, confiscate and explain why you had to confiscate it, and why that person should not have purchased it
while they were abroad. Q: It seems like the most recent additions to the zoo have been endangered species — the painted dogs and the tigers come to mind. Why is that? Dinwiddie: Our zoo’s mission statement is that we enrich the community through education and conservation. A big part of that is including species that are in need of conservation, for several reasons. First of all, there’s the education aspect of it. For example, you can’t bond with or decide to love a painted dog or giraffe if you’ve never seen one. All the pictures in the world won’t do what standing and looking at one eyeto-eye will do, and then that makes more people concerned with the conservation of that species. Like all zoos, we are also becoming involved with the field studies and the field research that is actually handson, boots-on-the-ground work to actually save those species. Our painted dogs, for example, provided genetic material that was then transported back to the field to be utilized in order to widen the genetics within the species in the field. So hav-
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