World Turtle Day! (see, I don't ONLY talk about penguins...)

HAPPY WORLD TURTLE DAY!!!!

World Turtle Day started in 2000 by the American Tortoise Rescue to bring attention to turtles and tortoises and encourage people to help with their conservation. There are a lot of really simple ways that we can help turtles in the wild. Especially with vacation season coming up. Check out the information below to learn how to help these amazing animals!

 Ways you can help turtles and tortoises:

• Never remove any turtles or tortoises from the wild unless they are hurt or injured and need care.
• If you see a turtle crossing the street, carefully move them to the side in the direction they were heading. If you take them back to the side they started on, they will just turn around and try to cross again (they usually have a mission in mind!).
• Never buy a turtle or tortoise from a pet store. This just increases demand from the wild.
• If you go on vacation, remember to leave the beach EXACTLY how you found it! Almost everyone goes on vacation at some point in their lives, and almost everyone visits a nice, warm, relaxing beach location! Yet most people do not realize that their fun day at the beach could end up being a possibly fatal night for sea turtles if we leave the beach a mess! Here are some points below that explain how you can help sea turtles and other aquatic animals during your vacation.

Remove anything from the beach that you brought with you. Do not leave lounge chairs, umbrellas, garbage, towels, toys, boats or anything else on the beach overnight. These items can get in the way of nesting mother sea turtles trying to find a good place to lay their eggs, or even in the way of hatchling sea turtles who are trying to make it to the water.

Fill in any holes that are dug in the sand, and flatten any sand castles that were made. I know it sounds sad to destroy all that hard work with those holes and sand castles, but these are HUGE obstacles to the hatchling sea turtles. Many hatchlings fall into these dug holes and cannot get back out and end up dying, or they become an easy target for predators such as gulls or raccoons. Also, with obstacles such as sand castles, turtles can bump into them and get confused and turn back the wrong way. Anything that stands in their direct path can cause trouble for turtles.
 
Clean-up all the garbage you see: both yours and anyone else’s. This might seem like a simple task, but it makes a HUGE difference for sea turtles and other aquatic animals. Turtles can easily mistake plastic bags and other trash for their favorite food – jellyfish. This trash gets stuck in the turtle’s digestive tract and can seriously injure or kill the turtles.

Thanks for reading! Hopefully we can all do our part to help these amazing animals! Especially when on vacation! If you are going to Florida this summer, check online for any Sea Turtle Rescues in the area and see if they offer tours of their facility. These places really are amazing and could offer a very unique experience for your typical vacation! Let me know if you end up visiting anywhere! I'd love to hear about it!

Endangered Species Day! (May 17th, 2013)

Yesterday, May 17, 2013, was Endangered Species Day! This day was started by the United States Senate in 2006, and is now recognized on the third Friday in May every year. Endangered Species Day is designed to increase public understanding of endangered plants and animals. Every year, thousands of people throughout the country celebrate Endangered Species Day at parks, wildlife refuges, zoos, aquariums, botanical gardens, libraries, schools and community centers!

Endangered Species Day is a great opportunity for teachers to educate about the importance of all animal and plant life, and to talk about how we can help these endangered species by doing a few simple things in our own homes and backyards. If you are a teacher, or if you are looking for some fun and easy activities for kids, check out this link... http://www.stopextinction.org/esd/195-esd-education.html.

Also, check this link below to learn about 10 easy things you can do at home to protect endangered species! Simple things like avoiding pesticide usage and planting native plants can make a huge difference for the species in our area.
http://www.stopextinction.org/10athome.html  The way that I celebrated Endangered Species Day was by spending some quality time with my favorite endangered species... our African Black-Footed Penguins! (Can you tell that I like the penguins, yet?). But we actually celebrated a day late (tonight, May 18th). We went to visit a company festival and Simon the penguin got to meet the UC Bearcat and Mr. Redlegs! Becky is one of the Biologists at the Newport Aquarium (and a WAVE Foundation volunteer) who is featured with Simon and Mr. Redlegs in the picture below! And I am in the picture with Simon and the bearcat. I told them both about Endangered Species Day and how important it is to help these penguins, and they each gave a thumbs up for penguin conservation!  If you love penguins as much as I do, and you want to make sure they stay protected, then check out the Seafood Watch program at http://www.wavefoundation.org/conservation/help/seafood-watch/. Eating sustainable seafood is one of the best ways to help penguins and Seafood Watch makes it easy! Check it out and help these endangered animals!

Penguin painting...

A lot of people ask me what my favorite part of my job is for the WAVE Foundation. Well, there are a lot of aspects that I love, but above all, my favorite thing is painting with the penguins!

Our African Black-Footed penguins (the same penguins that went to our Putt for Penguins event a couple days ago) love to paint! We can only let one penguin paint at a time, so we have to set up a small barrier to designate a "painting area" for the penguins. Then, we place the canvases on the ground and get a thin layer of paint on the ground, too. We then pick a penguin, set them down in the paint so it gets all over their feet, and we let them run across the canvases!

We have 8 African penguins and all of them will paint, but not all of them love it. So I am always careful to pick the penguins who enjoy it the most. Our penguins are all girls, and their names are Randi, Paula, Simon, Blueberry, Red Pepper, Green Bean, Speckles and Sandy. Simon and Blueberry LOVE to paint, so I usually involve them the most. Speckles also LOVES to paint, but Speckles gets a little too excited when she paints and it can get a little smeary (it almost looks like a 2 year old finger-painting for the first time...).


So, why do we paint with the penguins? For two reasons...
1.) For Enrichment. Enrichment is something different and fun that the animals don't get to do every day. The purpose of enrichment is to enhance the animal's activity and provide mental stimulation for them. Painting not only allows the penguins to experience different textures and colors (they are very visual animals), but they also get "special" one on one time with their keepers/handlers since only one penguin is allowed to paint at a time.

2.) For Conservation. We actually take the artwork that is made and we sell it in the Newport Aquarium's gift shop and online at the WAVE Foundation's website at http://www.wavefoundation.org/support/animal-artwork/. Proceeds from the artwork benefit the WAVE Foundation's conservation and education programs. The African penguins are actually an endangered species and the WAVE Foundation supports the Southern African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB) in South Africa to help the conservation of the African Penguin and other shore birds.


For more information about what the WAVE Foundation does to support conservation and education initiatives, check out the "Support" link on our webpage at http://www.wavefoundation.org/support/.

This is Simon painting. She has such pretty foot prints!
 

Blueberry is another good painter, but sometimes she would rather sit next to me instead of paint... 

 

 

 Once the barrier comes down, the braver penguins often go "investigate" the leftover paint! This is Blueberry again checking everything out.

Putt for Penguins 2013

WOW! We just had our 3rd annual Putt for Penguins fundraiser event yesterday (May 11th) at Boone Links Golf Course in Florence, KY. It was a great success and a lot of fun! The WAVE Foundation has a few different fundraiser events throughout the year to raise money for our conservation and education programs, but Putt for Penguins is one of my favorite! It is probably my favorite because our African black-footed penguins get to enjoy the event, too. We have 8 African penguins at the Newport Aquarium, and yesterday we brought 2 of them to the golf course to meet the golfers (their names are Simon and Green Bean). We confused a lot of people by having a penguin out in 65 degree temperatures, but our African penguins loved the warmer weather! They are native to the beaches of South Africa and LOVE the sun and the sand. They can actually take temperatures over 100 degrees and be perfectly happy! This always surprises people, but it makes sense! I love how excited people get when they see the penguins for the first time. You can't help but laugh at a penguin that is waddling around. It is events like these that are a lot of fun, but for a good cause.

We had a great turn out for this year's Putt for Penguins. We had 22 teams with 4 golfers on each team. Bengals great David Fulcher even joined us for the event and one of the prizes for the golf competition was a piece of penguin art signed by him (in black and orange colors, of course!).

We also had a lot of other animals besides the penguins at the golf course. We had an American alligator, red-tailed boa, African pygmy hedgehog and an Indian star tortoise as well. All these animals did a great job meeting the golfers and showing off their unique characteristics!

Aquarium staff (and volunteers) David (left) and Caleb (middle) were in charge of the red-tailed boa at the Putt for Penguins event this year. I snuck in the picture, too at the last minute.




The top right picture below is a group of golfers from the Newport Aquarium. Including the Executive Director of the Aquarium, Eric Rose (far left). The penguin in this picture is Simon. The bottom right picture shows David Fulcher with me and Simon. The bottom left is a picture of Green Bean the penguin checking out the Putt for Penguins sponsor sign on the course. And finally, the top right picture shows me with Green Bean taking a picture at one of the holes.

Hello everyone! My name is Alle Foster and I am the Conservation Program Manager for the WAVE Foundation at the Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky. I have been working for the WAVE Foundation since April 2012, but have been with the Newport Aquarium since April 2011. Before that, I was an Educator and Zookeeper for the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden from 2007-2011. I have my Undergraduate Degree in Zoology from Miami University and am almost finished with my Master’s Degree in Zoology from Miami University as well. I have traveled the world for various conservation efforts (Mongolia, Belize, Namibia and Peru), and hope to continue to travel and spread my passion for helping any and all animal species possible! I hope to keep this blog updated with interesting and informative conservation projects and ideas that I experience through my work for the WAVE Foundation, plus share past experiences as well. I may not be the only person to update this blog, because I plan to enlist the insight from my various coworkers from the Newport Aquarium. The Biologists and other staff at the Aquarium are a great resource to have and I couldn’t do my job without them most days. Please leave any feedback and help me keep this blog alive! If there is anything that you are wondering about, or if there are any questions that I can answer, please post them in the comment section! Thanks for reading!

Pictures below in clockwise order from the top-right: This is me in Belize (hence the beautiful bandana. It was HOT there!) and our bus driver had stopped to help this little turtle cross the road. The next picture, also in Belize, this grasshopper flew at my head and wouldn't let go (I look a lot calmer in this picture than I actually was when it happened...). Below that, also in Belize, we worked with the Belize Zoo staff to feed their baby tapirs. Then, to the left of that is a picture of me with one of the Aquarium's African Black-Footed Penguins named Red-Pepper (she is one of my favorites!). Then, above that is a picture of my cat, Pedro and my now passed tarantula, Juliet. Pedro and Juliet had one of those "odd friendships" that you often see between animals. And finally, the top-left picture shows me trying my best to smile while holding a 100 pound bag of penguin guano in Peru (just to say I did it!). If you are interested in learning more about the penguin and marine mammal conservation efforts that we were involved with in Peru, then read the Peru Adventure blog at www.aquariumworks.org to learn about those adventures...