AZA 2009 - Day Two Notes

Day 2 of AZA is a riot of activity and people! From an early morning breakfast to sort out session details with my co-presenters on climate change and aquaria the day quickly became a procession of meetings, presentations and information exchange. Like all good conferences its overload… but in a good way!
Jane Goodall’s presentation this morning was a superb reminder of the power of the zoo and aquarium community to influence people’s attitudes. Now 75, Dame Jane (she was just made a Dame of the British Empire by the Queen), recalled with great clarity her first visits to the London Zoo as a precocious 4 year old and how they shaped her thinking about animal intelligence. Going back there to work for a year before she began her famous chimp studies in 1960, she developed an empathy with great apes that has been the rudder of her career over the past half century (see http://www.janegoodall.org/). Her new book “Hope for Animals and Their World: How Endangered Species are Being Rescued from the Brink” expresses optimism for the future of wild species.
After the opoening session, I joined sessions on AZA Accreditation, the Coastal America Coastal Ecosystems Learning Center (CELC) Annual partnership meeting and a session on capacity building for aquarium staff – all of which have provided me with both excellent technical updates and a wide array of new contacts. It has been especially helpful to meet with AZA staff and the many Aquaria Directors who are natural partners of the ASLC such as Dr John Nightingale CEO of the Vancouver aquarium which was just admitted as a CELC partner institution.
Below are a random selection of photos from the large exhibition Hall – posters and commercial exhibits – I think the next time I come to one of these I’d better bring a bigger bag to carry home all the materials on offer – SMT members beware – your inboxes will be filling with ideas next week!

A cheap options for getting people around Seward? - electric with solar - runs 50 miles on a charge

Getting into invasives - lots of interest here in the issues we have begun to grapple with in AK.

Oregon Zoo Green Team is doing a great job promoting sustainability actions and principles - I got my green stamp today by committing to 10 of those practices while here - read them online at
www.oregonzoo.org/aza2009

An interesting analysis of AZA member mission statements with all the words compiled into a graphic and the relative size shows frequency of mention... a quick assessment showed me we had most of the key terms covered...

Finally.. lots of aquaria are using citizen science as a key tool for engaging members and the public in their research and conservation work.