We were very pleased to receive our first sponsorship cheque
for the amount of £500 from Mr. H.G. and Mrs B.M.C. Simpson. This is clearly a
significant amount of money and will go a long way to helping us.
We estimate that Wader Quest will cost in the region of
£10,000, so a long way to go yet, but the more money we receive from people and
companies who feel that what we are doing is worthwhile the more people, and
especially children, around the world we will be able to engage with and talk
to.
But what exactly are we going to talk to them about?
To every group, we will be explaining who we are and why we
are there, let them know exactly why we think waders are such an amazing group
of birds. Some groups we will meet in formal situations, planned talks or
classrooms, but better still will be the engagement with people out in the
field where they can see the birds for themselves.
We want to:
highlight the incredible migrations that some waders
make,
explain the concept of flyways
and show how the birds absolutely rely on them referring where possible to
local projects that they could become involved in,
talk about the variety of waders
using their bills to emphasise this variety and how this means that destroying
an area does not result in the birds simply moving along a bit,
talk about the spoon-billed
sandpiper of course, and the WWT led international effort to save it from
extinction, and especially about the captive breeding programme
and talk to them about eco-tourism
and how the local economy benefits from the birds being there, exemplified by
our very presence.
This we hope will leave behind us minds changed and hearts touched
by this phenomenal group of birds and the challenges they face in the modern
world.
We may not change the world and leave in our wake a
fanatical bunch of wader lovers, but remember the hummingbird in the forest
fire story.
As all the other animals were leaving to save themselves the
jaguar saw a hummingbird fly to the river, pick up a drop of water in its tiny
beak, then fly over the fire and drop
the water on the flames. The jaguar said,
“Why are you wasting your time? You will never succeed in
dousing the fire!”
To
which the hummingbird replied,
“Maybe
not, but I’m doing what I can!”
A great idea Rick and Elis and I hope your talks help show people just how much our waders are under threat. Best of luck and I'll be keeping a close eye on the blog.
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