Hello All,
I can’t believe I’m already writing a final thoughts piece! These past months have gone by so incredibly fast and I have been able to experience the most amazing things. I crossed things off my bucket list that I didn’t even know should be on it!
I DEFINITELY RECOMMEND GETTING YOUR BUM IN MOTION AND COMING OVER HERE. Heck, I might try to win under a peusdonym just so I can do this again! Jokes, jokes.
I know that times are tough throughout the world these days, but I really do feel that it means that people should be contributing more and more to conservation and community projects as these are always the first to suffer when finances are shaky. I’ve learned and contributed so much over the past few weeks to both the natural and societal world and my experiences have been utterly priceless. Sure, there were a few things that I NEVER EVER EVER want to do again (read: cleaning out a penguin pool), but at the rapid rate of degradation to the environment and animal endangerment and extinction there will probably, unfortunately be things that I will never do again.
Here’s a wrap up of my favorite and least favorite moments:
Thing I thought I would hate but ended up looking forward to in the end: Call me crazy, but I really enjoyed chopping down the prickly pears. It was a great way to get out some aggression while being able to see hard, physical evidence that you are making a difference.
Thing I thought I would dislike, but ended up hating: TIE! Cleaning out the penguin pool (what a poopy job) and whale watching at ORCA. I was SO incredibly sea sick if I didn’t take mind-numbing medicine, that I spent the whole time with my eyes closed debating jumping overboard.
Favorite Animal: Bruce McFeatherson, hands down.
I was surprised that: Shamwari had so many animals, Kariega felt so personal and ORCA covered both land and marine conservation.
Actually, the biggest surprise to me was how little I knew about the real facts involving conservation. I feel much of the Western world’s basic knowledge of conservation comes solely from the media. A lot of this is often misleading or biased and most of the time completely gleans over real issues that people face in coservation (ie, elephant culling to control populations) thus resulting in the general public not fully understanding what the facts are.
I also found that a lot of people talk about the danger in animals losing their fear for humans, when in fact, I believe the more alarming situation is that humans have lost their fear of animals. With this loss of fear is also where the loss of respect is born. There are so many images of cute lions, cuddly hippos, or friendly wild animals that I think many humans have lost the ability to separate these from the animal’s true being. I can’t tell you how many times I heard people saying things like “Oooh look at the cute little fluffy wuffy lion! I want to curl up next to it!” or “I want to take that rhino home as a pet.”
This is ridiculous. I don’t know if we are too desensitized because of movies, petting zoos, regular zoos, aquariums, etc- anything that puts an animal in captivity- but these animals are WILD animals and should be treated with the correlating respect. The mind set that we seem to have is that we are in control, and this is where the animals lose.
I hope that I have been able to show you a bit of South Africa’s wild side over the last few months, and caused your brain to twitch. I’ve had a great time and I hope you have too.
Katherine Alex
