Leave No Trace education to schools in Illapel, Chile

Save the Wild Chinchillas is an environmental conservation organization whose goal is to ensure that endangered long-tailed chinchillas do not become extinct. In order to meet this goal we have three objectives: educate people of all ages, collect funds to protect habitat, and promote studies. Save the Wild Chinchillas, Inc. was founded in 1996 by college undergraduate and graduate students who were convinced that we could make a difference. Since then, we have created and distributed educational materials not only in Chilean schools, plazas and street markets but worldwide with the aid of artist, students, and teachers. Education materials range from children’s stories, a coloring book, photographs of chinchillas, a word search, comics as well as copies of scientific publications.

We have conducted Leave No Trace workshops at local schools and started annual Tree Fairs. We appreciate and continue to utilize the popular press worldwide to spread the word not only of chinchillas but also of conservation of all resources. Our international support generates enough funds to pay at least one local person to work full time. Community based conservation efforts began in 1997. About half of the wild chinchillas are located outside of the government reserve, and we have talked with all members of the local community to enhance protection of the chinchillas outside of officially protected lands. Although, we focus on protecting chinchilla colonies outside of the governmental reserve, we support the reserve through donations of time, which includes report writings that summarizing their transect data to teaching guards how to measure and weigh mammals, and donated materials include: cages, books, animal water bottles and transect flagging.

Our conservation efforts on focused on creating and enhancing habitat for chinchillas. Seeds are collected from the mountains, grown in our nursery and seedlings are transplanting into restoration areas. We are fortunate to been able to plant 10,000 seedlings over the last 8 years in the communally owned lands. Our partnership with this community has strengthened our knowledge and has led to a growing support of the conservation and protection of chinchillas and their habitat both locally and worldwide. We are proud to say that people from Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand, Europe, India, North and South America have aided in our achievements.
Tree Fair: One of our educational goals was to introduce Promoting Environmental Awareness in Kids packages, produced by the Center for Outdoor Ethics, in schools to help children acquire preservation ethics. At each school, workshops were conducted and children were assigned to grow plants with a family member. The children are to document the trees development and the species benefits for humans, wildlife and the environment. The seedling reports are due to be presented at our First Annual Tree Fair rescheduled for December 18 at the Casa de Cultura Plaza Illapel. We had scheduled the event for the 18 of November but since all Chilean municipalities were on strike, we had to postpone the event.

We also conducted a talk on the local radio station and introduced the concepts of Leave No Trace (www.lnt.org) to the
afternoon listeners. The LNT program was originally scheduled and funded for one month through he Northeastern Wisconsin Zoo and the N.E.W. Zoological Society Conservation Grant Fund. (www.newzoo.org/support/conservation/) However, it took 4 months, but in the end 14 local schools were visited, and LNT workshops were conducted for students ranging in ages from 5-19. The program was a great success because of the help from the local English teachers network! The English teachers also assigned the students the task of making environmental awareness posters that will be displayed at our citywide First Annual Tree Fair on 18 Dec. 2008. And 1 class made all the Tree Fair signs to post at participating schools and around the town.

We hope that the children and their families foster a greater appreciation for the environment. This is a great way to sustain the fruits of our habitat restoration efforts long term. We hope that people all over the world will persuade students to grow trees and schools to conduct Tree Fairs. We can all make a difference by growing plants. We have just began searching for funds for next year's LNT workshops. We are asking for funds to cover the cost of not only school visits but also visits to the local farmers. At each house, we want to work with the farmers to construct solar ovens in hopes of deterring some of the fire wood collecting.

Amy L. Deane and Bharath Ganesh-Babu, Save the Wild Chinchillas