Damon Gerard Corrie

Pan-Tribal Confederacy of Indigenous Tribal Nations

Today's Date: 2-February-2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Tortoises in Childhood - first pet & sacred animal tribally, it taught me patience, tranquility, diet for longevity (little meat), determination.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

I enjoyed all outdoor areas - natural - not man-made landscapes though.

Now? Same - except now I need the presence of my people around me as well to feel complete, where I grew up was in exile from my people.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

Tortoise, for all the reasons in answer to question 1.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Global warming caused by unbridled capitalism fueld by worship of the Almighty dollar - instead of the Creator of the universe.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Mankind was created to be the caretaker of this planet - not the destroyer of it; every living thing has an equal right to exist.

Charlie Toledo

Director/Suscol Intertribal Council

Today's Date:2/2/2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Lizard jumping at my head at night campfire. Also Humming bird circling me at auspicious moments all my life.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

Just the desert backyard. Created a whole cosmology w/my siblings staring at Sandia Crest and expansive blue sky of Albq., New Mexico

Now? All the hills, rivers and ocean I visit and work at in Northern California

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

Elephant, due to many recurring dreams and eventual trip to Africa where an entourage of all gender, all ages elephants crossed our path and huge male bull trumpeted our journey into "camp". The elephant is matriarchal, tribal; they bury their dead and care for their young as a group. All these are some of the reasons why I love elephants.

But my most favorite animal or insect is the one that is closest to me at the moment whether it be squirrel clicking at me through bedroom window, hawk whistling at me as I walk beneath it's tree or circling me in ceremony at sunrise, or the ant that is waving to me from the edge of my car to tell me "pay attention to the little things."

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

To pay attention to the little things water, air awareness of all species of life all are one air, one water. Survival of our greedy and overpopulated species will be the biggest challenge of the near future. Clean Water, clean air w/out these things we cannot live.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Walk!

Glenn Robinson

Hominid -- Earth First!

Today’s Date: February 2, 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

There was no single Natural interaction I can single out as life-changing. The Spring forests of upstate NY and mountains of Colorado's Front Range come to mind, though.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

Now? These days I enjoy day trips/weekends in the Jemez mountains of New Mexico, but all Earth is my home and country.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

I'm rather partial to binturongs. Easy-going, spend their days high and safe in a tree, come out at night to forage.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Greatest environmental challenge? Countering the complete environmental collapse currently underway. A planetary infection of intelligent apes, destroying and polluting everything they touch.

Future challenges: Maintaining biodiversity, preventing future catastrophic infestations.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Don't breed!

Ararat Majeed Raheem

Head, Green Kurdistan Society, Kurdistan Region, Iraq

Today's Date: 1 February 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

I am protecting env. for this every animal impacted me especially horses

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

boyn village

Now? mountains and villages life

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

[no answer given]

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

recycling

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

every man be regarded about env. because the earth in danger. my religion is zardashty not Islam my religion ordered me to protect the environment every where

joni aka Karen Kluger

Author

Today's Date: Jan. 31, 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Two. Eagles and dolphins.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

Yes, the gardens the city provided for residents to grow vegetables.

Now? The coastal life oaks near my former home in Southern California. Love those trees. The woods in the Pacific Northwest that I enter only 250 feet from my home.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

Dogs. I'm inclined to agree with the saying that dogs are here to teach us how God loves us and cats are how we respond.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Hands down...global warming. Plastic bags and prescription drugs whose particles end up in our rivers and streams as the water makes its way to the sea.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Read "Lessons Under the Oak Tree." We categorize the natural world as though it is separate from us. The things on the earth are there for us to use and abuse. Readers say the book changes the way the reader looks at the world, gently showing how intimately we are connected to nature in ways not taught in school. If we only knew how much we are interconnected with all that is on earth, we would think twice before destroying it.

Vincent Carlisle Espínola

Protocol and External Relations - University of Alcalá

Today's Date: January 31, 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

My first visit to Iguassu Falls, before moving to Europe--walking next to the immense waterfalls was definitely a breathtaking experience. There, I was also able to walk through the tropical forest and encounter pumas, koatís, and other animals up-close.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

Yes, a wonderful hillside/valley full of coconut trees and pine tress, with a cascade cutting through the hills.

Now? No. It is difficult to find "great outdoors" in Europe. I enjoy any piece of land, even the smallest one, and don't expect "great" outdoors... in doing so, I enjoy being outdoors always, and if I do encounter something "great" in Europe, I'm even more pleased and in communion with nature.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

Macaws. Their brilliant-colored plumage and ability to speak on repetition, apart from the fact the I used to have a couple of macaws as pets when I was young.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

The greatest challenge nowadays is to make the government of the USA comply with the Kyoto Treaty. It is outrageous that the country that most pollution creates is precisely the one who was not signed, nor ratified, nor respects this environmental Treaty.

The greatest challenge (now and for the future) is to make people more conscious of the need to recycle. The populations of the so-called "advanced, first world" are those who most trash generate in the world (especially in the USA), and therefore it is essential to create collective consciousness that a) space is finite (and so are dump plots); b) a great percentage of our trash can be recycled; c) excessive trash and debris damage our ecosystem, and we can reduce this damage by recycling.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Try to reuse things as much as you can, since resources are finite. If you can't reuse them, then recycle!

Abdulrahman A. Alenezi

Instructor/ Public Authority of Applied Education, Kuwait

Today's Date: 30 Jan. 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Trapping birds alive when I was 6 years old, just outside my house, were mostly Wheatears.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

Open desert 500m from my home, Kuwait Zoo also 500m from where I live.

Now? I drive to Jahra East sewage outfall for birding.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

The lion as it is the strongest.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Destruction of wildlife habitat. We should stop urban expansion, and limit land use.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

We should have a decent respect regarding the environment and land use and should stop trading in wildlife animals for ever.

Irene Sanz

PhD student in the University of Alcalá, Spain

Today's Date: 30th January 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Well, two years ago my sister brought a kitten which was very sick. Vets told us that she may not recover but now she is quite fine and I love her. I could not help crying when I saw her for the first time, she had temperature and some diseases, besides she was quite weak. Well, she has just jumped on to my legs.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

I used to go with my grandparents to a pine wood next to our city. We used to bring omelettes and spend there the afternoon talking and playing. And also, in front of my former house there was a park where I used to go with my mother and then with some friends.

Now? Well, I am not sure. I like being in contact with nature in general, in a forest area, having a great sight and with some friends. Four months ago I went with some friends to Cercedilla, a village with some mountains to practice trekking and I had a great time. It was a bit hard for me, but I loved the experience of being in contact with nature.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

I used to love dolphins because they are so nice and at the same time intelligent. Now, I think cats are also very interesting animals and in relation to cats, I would like to give a special place to the iberic lynx, an endangered animal that lives only in Spain

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Just one challenge? Well some politicians should start thinking seriously about Kyoto. Apart from CO2 emissions, we have serious problems with deforestation and everything is related with the climatic change. We have left the nuclear problem behind, at least that it is what we think but maybe in the future we should start thinking of new energies.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Well, I would tell them to think as Native Americans do regarding nature, if you treat the natural world with the same respect you treat human beings, then, there will be some hope. Natural resources do not last forever, neither do we.

Frank Roulstone

General Manager, National Trust for the Cayman Islands

Today's Date: 29 Jan 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

Growing up in an unspoiled tropical paradise I was continually surrounded by nature above and below the water. It has given me an appreciation for all living things. Seeing this paradise continually destroyed has had the greatest impact on me.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

My grandparents had a summer home in Bent Mountain, Virginia. When we visited them we had lakes, streams and mountains to explore that we did not have at home.

Now? I am continually amazed that even with the small size of our islands we continue to make new discoveries of plants and animals! So I like exploring my home best but am constantly looking for new unspoiled places to explore.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

I have always been obsessed with flying so birds and butterflies hold my interest. The tiny blue butterflies (Pygmy Blue, Lucas Blue, Cassius Blue) always catch my attention.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

The overpopulation of the world. All other challenges are directly related to this one issue. It will continue to be the greatest challenge until nature corrects itself.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Help organizations set some of our planet aside for conservation. Habitat conservation is the only way we will save what is left.

Joni Spigler

PhD Candidate, Department of the History of Art, University of California, Berkeley

Today’s Date: January 28, 2007

1. What interaction with an animal and/or nature in your life has had the biggest impact on you?

When I was a little girl I had a horse named Cinnamon. We lived in Mesa, Arizona at the time, near the dry Salt River bed, and in those days I could ride my horse from the little stables down the road to Arizona State University without ever seeing another human being. Of course I wasn’t allowed to ride so far, but I was secretive and rebellious. I loved the silence of the desert, and seeing the lizards and roadrunners darting and flitting across path ahead of us as I rode. You become very aware of your surroundings while riding, because anything can spook a horse. I told Cinnamon all my secrets and learned to read in her movements her desires and fears. I loved the way the sunlight hit the earth in those days, and remember looking down on the bleached bones of many animals. It was wonderful to gallop down powdery paths with a combination of sheer joy and terror. And there were little “oases” where Cinnamon could wade in shallow ponds and drink or nibble grasses. Some years the Salt River would flood and my friends and I would watch as whole houses and trucks would be washed down river in front of our eyes. When I was a child I wasn’t really thinking about economics or human displacement, but I was always awed by how sublime nature was, whether seeing what a river could do or just encountering the vastness of the desert.

2. Did you have a favorite place in the great outdoors during your childhood?

The desert.

Now? I live in the Bay Area, and so I really do love to walk by the water and watch the lapping waves and changing light. I love tide pools and their little ecologies.

3. As a former zookeeper, I would love to know what your favorite animal is, and why?

I love my cat Kabuki. If I could *be* an animal I’d be a dolphin because they are smart and playful...or an otter because they are *always* playing. I think octopuses are fascinating to watch. I feel sorry for the elephants. And I love tigers. Jane Goodall’s “Chimpanzees, So Like Us” made me cry.

4. What do you think is the greatest environmental challenge facing us now, and what do you think will be the greatest challenge in the future?

Well, maybe this is the popular answer, but global warming. I understand that the big challenge will be to find a way to control global warming and its effects while not limiting the resources and technologies developing countries will have access to. But I also wish that, globally, we would learn to want something other than this world we are creating now.

5. If you could give everyone one piece of advice regarding the environment and our natural resources, what would it be?

Capitalism works under the assumption that resources are unlimited, but they simply are not. Our current economic philosophies and practices underlie most of the damage we are doing to our environment and we need to find a way to channel our innate desires into something other than the competitive struggle to have bigger and better stuff and “lifestyles”.