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The Foxes are Guarding the Henhouse: An unprecedented need to protect the policies that protect our environment
At a watch party for President Trump’s inauguration ceremony in January 2017, I had a conversation with a friend who’s a lawyer at one of DC’s biggest law and…
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Communicating Conservation Effectively with Zoo and Aquarium Guests
Conservation is the action of protecting and rejuvenating ecosystems so that the plants and animals within them can thrive indefinitely. If those inhabitants could accomplish this on their own,…
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The Ocean Project launches new initiative to promote science-based federal fisheries policy and healthy, sustainable marine ecosystems
Healthy and productive marine ecosystems are critical to sustaining food, jobs, and recreation for millions of people, as well as producing other intrinsic quality of life benefits. To have…
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Pilot project shows that engaging visitors in conservation efforts can inspire commitments and enhance experience!
During the week surrounding World Oceans Day, 12 zoos, aquariums and museums (ZAMs) participated in a pilot project that had them asking their visitors about helping to address the…
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Youth Taking the Lead for Conservation Action
Teens with Bags: The ZooALIVE teen volunteers from the Saint Louis Zoo pose with their #byetobags reusable bags! They are ready to go and spread the reusable bag message! In the summer of 2016, Phillipe Cousteau, grandson of legendary explorer Jacques Cousteau, recognized youth as “the hope for our oceans.” Across the globe, there is an ever-growing group of young and passionate leaders with confident “can-do” attitudes ready to make positive changes for our planet. Today more than ever, these youth are involved in major conservation action projects. Countless organizations have dynamic youth groups helping them carry out their conservation missions. The Ocean Project placed special emphasis on youth engagement in 2016, with plans for expansion in 2017 and beyond. Despite these advancements, there is an untapped potential to allow youth to not only be involved in, but also build and lead conservation action projects. Providing youth with the right amount of guidance, while allowing them to create and accomplish meaningful actions for our oceans can reap invaluable benefits. During the course of the Innovative Solutions Grants program, our partners provided youth with some powerful opportunities. Program grantees uncovered new and innovative approaches towards youth engagement in the process. At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Debbie Colodner strongly encouraged others to, “engage the power of young professionals or university students to help make the case,” which, in their case, was that, “millennial customers care about where their (seafood) comes from”. Kirinne at St. Louis Zoo noted that, “one of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags,” as their youth group learned a lot about not only engaging visitors on-site, but also through social media. The team led by the Woodland Park Zoo, summed it all up when writing, “empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies!” They also added, “when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation.” Rather than looking only at the opportunity to reach youth with information, many of the program grantees went “above and beyond” to explore how they might empower youth to improve and amplify a conservation message. The combined experience of grantees at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, New England Aquarium, Riverbanks Zoo, Saint Louis Zoo, Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum and Woodland Park Zoo all point towards an opportunity to increase youth leadership development all while advancing their conservation missions. In 2017, let’s strive to provide youth with more leadership opportunities and turn their positive “can-do” attitudes into meaningful action for our oceans. Stay tuned for more from the World Oceans Day Youth Advisory Council and from The Ocean Project on exciting new youth engagement and youth leadership development opportunities!
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Advice from the Innovators: A summary of lessons learned in public engagement from year three of the Innovative Solutions Grants + Program (ISG+)
Our grantees from year three have completed their projects and submitted their final reports, which are filled with tips and lessons for other aquariums and zoos that share their interest in engaging visitors and advancing conservation. Many thanks to NOAA for making these grants possible. Per your request, we’ve compiled this summary of the top line takeaways. Links to their full reports with more detailed results, can be found below. Help your audiences turn inspiration into action! In other words, don’t just tell visitors what you are doing, invite them into the effort and document their support! Kirinne Slaughter, who led efforts under the grant to the Saint Louis Zoo, wrote in her final report, “our results confirmed The Ocean Project’s finding that (visitors) do indeed expect, trust, and appreciate the advice that you have to offer them on how they could become part of the plastic pollution solution…not only were our guests willing to sign a pledge (90% of those asked did so) but some were willing to share that pledge and stay invested on social media”. This finding was echoed by Wei Ying Wong of The Philadelphia Zoo, who reported that, “in addition to pledging to take action (to reduce their home energy use), 54% of those who were asked to participate in the tracking study (agreed to) let us track their household energy usage!” In a powerful presentation about her project at the AZA Annual Conference, Wei Ying could be heard wondering aloud if we are aiming too low with our conservation asks – these results certainly seem to suggest that! Seattle Youth CAN Empower youth to be conservation advocates. Instead of approaching youth as an audience for you to engage, ask youth to help you engage others, then hang on for the ride! Based on the experience of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Debbie Colodner strongly encouraged others to, “engage the power of young professionals or university students to help make the case,” which, in their case, was that, “millennial customers care about where their (seafood) comes from”. Kirinne at St. Louis Zoo also found this to be true, noting that, “one of the most exciting and successful parts of our campaigns was allowing the teens to experiment with the delivery of the #byetobags.” Notably, the team learned a lot not only about engaging visitors onsite, but, if you check out their final report also through social media, along with some bonus findings about the impact their onsite efforts had on guest behavior at their own gift shop. Eli Weiss of the Woodland Park Zoo shared similar advice, adding from his two years under the grant that “empowering youth leaders to develop public, and especially peer-to-peer, conservation engagement efforts is highly recommended and can lead to exciting new engagement strategies!” With one notable caveat, “that when teen leaders are developing public engagement efforts, their enthusiasm and ideas need focus to ensure successful implementation.” If you are interested in learning about youth engagement, look no further than the final report submitted by Eli and his partners at the Seattle Aquarium and Pacific Science Center. A group of TAYR congregation members during a community cleanup. Photo: National Aquarium Look beyond the impact you can have on individuals and consider community partnerships, especially when thinking of success at scale. Eli of Woodland Park noted that one of the primary lessons from their second year was to, “take the time to develop relationships with other organizations who have an overlapping interest in reaching youth and advancing conservation rather than doing it alone,” adding that, “zoos and aquariums can play a critical role in developing networks of youth conservation leaders, and in this electronic age don’t underestimate the power of in-person gatherings.” Debbie from the Desert Museum noted the incredibly positive response their project had from local restaurants, and advised others to, “work with interested chefs/owners to partner on strategies to build the local sustainable seafood (effort)”. If you’re interested in advancing sustainable seafood, or events that advance conservation, the full story of their efforts with local youth and local restaurants can be found here. Gabrielle Roffe and Curtis Bennett of the National Aquarium, who used a “pillar approach” to develop a truly inspirational partnership with their local community, advised, “take the time to familiarize yourself with the community, in both the physical and social sense (and) remember that building trusting community relationships is a two-way street. You have to get to know the community but you also have to give the community time to get to know you… from there focus on opportunities to create mutually beneficial goals in order to create a collaborative effort.” For anyone interested in community engagement, their final post is a must read! Our research tells us that when doing public engagement, start by giving your audience the solutions and then dive deeper into the details. So, audience, if you’re now inspired to go deeper, here are all of the links to their reports! Participants at Fini's Landing celebration of World Oceans Day Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum: Awarded $20,000 to engage university students in Tasting Sustainability, a community-based conservation initiative on the issue of seafood sustainability. Initial post Midterm post Final post TAYR Youth Group at a debris cleanup at Masonville CoveNational Aquarium: Awarded $25,000 for a project that engages the Hispanic community in a small Baltimore watershed on the issue of marine debris. Initial post Midterm post Final post Saint Louis Zoo: Awarded $15,000 to launch a project directed predominantly by teen volunteers on site and via social media with an emphasis on reducing the use of single-use plastic bags. Initial post Midterm post Final post Youth leaders on stage Woodland Park Zoo: Awarded a second year of funding, at $30,000 to expand their leadership role with Seattle Youth Climate Action Network (CAN), an evolution of Woodland Park Zoo, Seattle Aquarium and Pacific Science Center youth programs. Initial post (Transition between years) Midterm post Final post
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The Trump Administration: The Opportunity for Aquariums and Zoos
The optimist in me always looks for new opportunities that are presented with the changes that come after an election – and that is no different following the election of Donald Trump. Based on comments made before and after the election, I expect a rancorous debate between industry and conservative think tanks, and environmental groups and liberal think tanks on environmental laws and regulations. The new administration’s likely agenda will include reducing environmental regulations under the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts; increasing fishing, mining, logging, ranching and oil and gas exploration in public waters and on public and private lands; repealing the Antiquities Act, which every President since Teddy Roosevelt has used to protect America’s treasures; and reversing commitments made by President Obama to address climate change. It will likely impact the reauthorization or renewal of existing laws such as the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, or the Farm Bill. So…what role can aquariums and zoos play? An important one! Many of the same people will be making the same arguments about the same issues. Now more than ever there is a need for new voices, specifically sources of information that base their opinions on an objective analysis of available scientific information. This type of science-based work is exactly what aquariums and zoos do every day to care for animals, advance their survival in the wild, and engage visitors and the public for conservation. And it is exactly why you are so respected by your guests and neighbors. Additionally, your audience is likely more like America than any other conservation constituency. You can break through the social media silos and mainstream media silos and speak directly to people who trust you as a non-partisan, objective, and rational voice. The data is clear that when visiting an aquarium or a zoo, your visitors expect, trust, and appreciate information about conservation and how to help with solutions. In addition, “walking the talk” as an institution resonates with audiences, especially when visitors and members are positioned as part of the effort in a “together we can” approach that also helps get to the scale necessary to effect change. I began my career on Capitol Hill in 1987 and have been engaged in conservation ever since. What drew me to work with zoos and aquariums in 2004 is the incredible platform you have to inform the discussion and advance conservation in meaningful ways -- a dozen years later that opportunity still exists and is needed now more than ever. And as you do so, know that The Ocean Project continues to grow its policy advocacy capacity, and we stand ready to help you craft messages and develop approaches that are both strategic and effective. The space in these debates for aquariums and zoos includes translating the best available science into an objective recommendation versus using political science to shape natural science to achieve a policy objective. Your guests and neighbors trust you and look to your guidance on how to help with conservation issues. You have real opportunities to communicate at the local level through your platforms and channels while engaging in timely and coordinated actions on national policy issues. How you do it without a political backlash is simple – stick to the facts and use the data. For example, institutions engaged in conservation programs to protect endangered or threatened species, such as the SAFE campaign, can objectively analyze the available science to make informed decisions. That skill set can be transferred to policy debates with the simple preface such as: “As a science-based institution we’ve reviewed the available science and data and have concluded…” Much of the media coverage will be of the horse race regarding who is winning and losing, but what will fly under the radar of this coverage is that the science each side cites to support their cause will be cherry-picked, biased, or both. The two sides and many of their supporters in Washington will talk past and over each other, people near you will wonder what has changed and be open to objective information from sources they can trust. Since becoming The Ocean Project’s Policy Advisor just over two years ago, we’ve worked on several projects allowing aquariums and zoos to voice support for appropriations related to environmental education at NOAA and EPA and also the creation and expansion of marine protected areas in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. What I learned from these advocacy actions (from simple letter sign-ons to youth initiatives like Sea Youth Rise Up to fully implemented onsite visitor engagement campaign) was that aquariums and zoos want to be active in visible ways – and that may be needed now more than ever. You have an opportunity to leverage your unique position as a valuable community asset and valued community institution. As The Ocean Project builds out our policy program in support of and in partnership with aquariums and zoos, we hope you consider joining us, as we collaborate with others such as AZA and ACP, in future actions. If you are interested in doing so, please contact us. Learn more about Tom Adams and our team here.
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The results are in! SEA LIFE Trust and SEA LIFE Aquariums vote for Marine Protected Areas
Based on a successful pilot, the SEA LIFE Trust and SEA LIFE Aquariums in partnership with The Ocean Project rolled out an effort to engage visitors at all of our American aquariums on the issue of marine protected areas. The pilot gave us confidence! It confirmed that our visitors expect, trust and appreciate information from aquariums about how to help the ocean and its animals, and that they especially liked the opportunity to “vote” in favor of expanding our nation’s network of marine protected areas. Marine Protected Area Ballot The pilot identified an opportunity. We realized that by engaging our visitors and documenting their opinions on this issue, we could give every-day Americans a voice in a discussion that otherwise might be dominated by special interests. This was a role that among all the conservation organizations working on this issue, we were best equipped to do. So we took our initial idea as piloted, and revised it slightly. Rather than asking our visitors a simple yes/no question about their support for marine protected areas, we asked them to choose among four sites we knew to be currently under consideration, while also providing an opportunity to answer with all or none of the above. And we developed a web site to reach those beyond our gates: Our Blue Backyard. Thank you President Obama! Our eight sites collected nearly 30,000 votes in six weeks and diligently counted them all! Yet again our visitors showed that they were strongly supportive of expanding our nation’s network of marine protected areas, with 97% voting in favor of adding one or more sites, and “all of the above” receiving the highest number of votes. And while we did not do another set of exit surveys, the anecdotal feedback from the visitors was also overwhelmingly positive. Most important, we were able to share these views with national leaders at a critical time, right as President Obama was deciding to expand the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument off the coast of Hawaii, and create the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument. If you would have told me just a few months ago that by the end of our effort two of the four areas would be protected, I’m not sure I would have believed it, but yet that is exactly what happened! We were able to thank our visitors for joining us in support, and then on behalf of our visitors reach out to thank the President. Engaging our visitors, asking them to participate, and documenting their opinons is certainly an approach that worked well! We also, however, learned some valuable lessons along the way about how best to do so. We were reminded of the power of the on-site visit, and the way that inspires guests to want to help animals. We just need to provide them with an easy way to turn that inspiration into action! We saw the benefits of having a relatively simple and straightforward engagement strategy best exemplified by the initial yes/no voting exercise. While some of our visitors wanted to know more about the specific sites being considered, many more simply wanted to express their support for conservation. While many of us “old timers” at aquariums and zoos think about our impact on the indiviudual visitor, we found here a great example of what can be done when taking a more systemic view about how we could help bring the collective opinion of our vistiors to the attention of our national leaders. And we noted that it was best to be flexible in our approaches. For example, we began thinking it would be more efficient and effective to engage guests at ticketing, but most of our aquariums, including the one with the best results (SEA LIFE Arizona Aquairum) found that it was far better to create a separate space. Although it would have required additonal effort, looking back it would have been nice to have done the exit surveys not just for the pilot but for the full campaign, as those exit surveys so strongly suggested that by engaging visitors and aksing them to participate, we also helped increase their sense that together we can solve these problems, as well as their understanding of the improtant role aquariums and zoos can play in advancing conservation. The biggest takeaway of all was that we can, and in my view should be doing more together with our visitors to help advance conservation – it truly is a win-win. And with that, I am already excited about our next effort. This guest post was submitted by Chris Andrews, Head of Animal Welfare and Development at SEA LIFE Aquariums in the US.
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Shedd Aquarium Pledges to Protect our Blue Planet Year-Round
This guest blog comes from Aislinn Gauchay, Assistant Director of Great Lakes and Sustainability at Shedd Aquarium. Shedd Aquarium is a Supporting Partner of The Ocean Project. Earth. The third rock from the sun. Our humble planet has many names, but what makes our Blue Planet truly unique is what covers 71 percent of our surface and without which life would not exist: water. Oceans are the heart of our planet: they shape weather and wind, are home to one million animal and plant species and are the primary source of protein for more than 2.6 billion people. Oceans serve as the foundation for a delicately balanced food web that supports all life, from the Marianas Trench to the top of Mount Everest. Our oceans and the animals that call them home are critical to sustaining life on earth, human life included. However, our relationship to and dependence upon healthy, abundant oceans is not universally acknowledged. The most critical threats to our oceans are produced by human activity, such as overfishing, habitat degradation and pollution. More than 8 million tons of plastic trash end up in the ocean every year, including millions of disposable plastic bags and bottles. Though our oceans are often uncelebrated, there is one day out of the year where a plethora of organizations like the Ocean Project and Shedd Aquarium team up to celebrate what makes our planet blue on World Ocean’s Day. For this year’s celebration, the Ocean Project and singer Jack Johnson ignited the #WaveForChange challenge, asking people to do something to help our oceans. Shedd Aquarium’s President and CEO Dr. Bridget Coughlin took the #WaveForChange challenge on behalf of our organization and pledged to continue to reduce our plastic usage, spread the message, and encourage others to join us in making a difference. Shedd Aquarium is taking action on the issue of plastic pollution in our ocean and is constantly looking for ways to reduce our use of this seemingly omnipresent commodity in innovative ways. We started small, by providing reusable bags instead of disposable plastic bags, installing reusable water bottle refilling stations, and eliminating plastic straws onsite. Our goal is to continue this initiative at Shedd, in our community, and throughout the country. For example, during this year’s Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series event in Chicago, we worked with race organizers and sustainability partner organizations 11th Hour Racing and America’s Cup Endeavor Chicago to inform event attendees and thousands of guests visiting Chicago’s landmark Navy Pier about the impact of plastic pollution on our lakes and oceans, offering them an opportunity to pledge to reduce their household plastic use. In 2015, we extended our commitment to freshwater and marine conservation at a higher level by joining forces with two other aquariums, Monterey Bay Aquarium and National Aquarium, to form the Aquarium Conservation Partnership (ACP). As a co-founder, and thus an executive committee member, Shedd works with fellow industry leaders to advance ocean and freshwater conservation policy goals. This includes advocating for the expansion of marine protected areas and increasing protection for exploited species. At Shedd, conservation is critical to everything we do. Whether it be sourcing only sustainable, restaurant quality seafood for our animals or pledging to reduce our use of plastic, Shedd believes we can all take steps and make a big difference toward protecting and preserving our oceans. We can do more together than alone. You can learn more about Shedd’s conservation initiatives on our website.
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SEA LIFE Centers find public support for Marine Protected Areas
SEA LIFE Aquariums and SEA LIFE Trust wanted to know if visitors shared our interest in expanding our nation’s network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). With this in mind, we initiated in partnership with The Ocean Project a pilot project at two of our sites, Carlsbad and Orlando. We developed an exit survey with a program called iSurvey that allows for offline collection on iPads, and then site staff randomly sampled our guests about their opinions of marine protected areas, as well as their feedback on our being involved in this effort. Guests responded well to the iPads, and we were able to collect a sample large enough to have a high degree of confidence in the results. We looked at the overall results, as well as the results for a subset of guests who participated in a voting activity (I’ll explain in more detail below), and another subset of guests who received additional interpretation. The overall response on the exit survey was overwhelmingly positive, with yet more evidence for the earlier research findings that visitors to aquariums and zoos truly do expect, trust and appreciate information about how they can help the ocean and its animals. If anyone is still asking whether or not we as aquariums and zoos “inspire” the public’s interest in addressing environmental issues, look no further than the following chart, which shows that while on site a full two-thirds indicated that they believed their actions could have a great deal of impact on environmental problems. Moreover, we had more than 98%, yes, more than 98% of our guests agreed with the statements that “SEA LIFE Aquariums are a good source of information about ocean conservation” and “Learning how to help conserve the ocean and its animals makes for a better visit to a SEA LIFE Aquarium.” In sum, we have access to the public when they are inspired to act, and they’re telling us that they trust our guidance and appreciate learning how to help – so let’s be bold! On the particular issue of MPAs, our guests were just as positive, with again strong agreement both for the idea of expanding our nation’s network of protected areas and for the involvement of our aquariums in that effort. So if picking an issue on which to be bold, MPAs certainly seem like a good choice! And notably this was not a hypothetical question. During his presidency, President Obama already has shown a willingness to support marine protection by significantly expanding the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument in 2014 and then announcing two completely new marine sanctuaries in October 2015 . At the same time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has been soliciting nominations for new protected areas. This is why at Sea Life we’ve come to see now as the right time to invite the public into this issue, document their interest, and bring it back to our policy leaders. In an interesting twist to our pilot we also aimed to test the impact of an activity, and the impact of interpretation on guest response. A subset of guests at both sites participated in a simple voting activity, where they were handed a paper ballot, which gave basic background on the sanctuary nomination process and asked if they supported the idea, yes or no. The voting activity was low cost and easy to implement, and guests liked it. And they certainly liked the idea of expanding the sanctuary system, with a full 94% voting in favor, and based on a related question, primarily out of concern for the animals. Meanwhile, a separate subset of guests at our Carlsbad site received interpretation, talking with one of our educators about MPAs. The interpretation was more resource intensive, taking up a lot of staff time, but again guests liked the interactions. But did either experience impact their response on the exit survey? We didn’t have as much confidence in these findings due to the relatively small sample sizes, but indications were that even though the baseline of ‘visit alone’ was quite high, the response from those who participated in the voting activity or received interpretation was even higher. Moreover, the voting exercise had the benefit of documenting public interest in the issue in a way that could be easily relayed. What’s next? Based on the promising results of the pilot, and some timely advice from policy experts, we’re revising the approach to focus on a revamped version of the voting activity. Our goal is now to invite as many guests as possible to tell us which of four areas currently under they’d like to see protected as #blueparks. And we’ll also be reaching out online with a presence at http://bluebackyard.org, where, in fact, you should go now to cast your vote! ~This guest post was submitted by Chris Andrews from Sea Life
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