Let me preface this article by saying that Bonnie Zimmerman is a bad ass.
Who is Bonnie Zimmerman you may ask? I'll get to that in a minute.
This past weekend I had the absolute pleasure of attending and volunteering at The Animal Behavior Center's four-day Annual October Event, and to put it simply: it was an experience I will never forget, and anyone who wants to learn more about animals and their behavior or care, should absolutely attend the next one. Lara Joseph, the owner of the Animal Behavior Center, is a flaming red-haired passionate animal-loving human being who I have been blessed to be able to know. The center she started is three and a half years old and this year's October Event was the third she's had.
The Annual October Event in the past two years has only been a jam packed two-day shindig, but this year, they bumped it up to four. Day one was on Frida,y with a hands-on animal behavior and training workshop with Lara herself teaching it. Day two and three were both full of interesting speakers with topics varying wildly across the board. If you don't think you can correlate animal behavior with children diagnosed with Autism, you obviously didn't go to this event. The last day was a behind the scenes zoo tour at the Indian Creek Zoo in Lambertville, Michigan where Lara goes weekly to train the animals there.
Let me get to my point, instead of sitting here fan-girling over the awesomeness that is Lara Joseph.
One of the lovely speakers at the Animal Behavior Center's event was Bonnie Zimmerman, whose name sounds familiar from the beginning of my article. She is an amazing speaker who had me listening to her every word for the entirety of her two presentations. But, what's so special about her? She is the director of the Indonesian Parrot Project and is constantly working to promote education, rescue, rehabilitation and enrichment for parrots in captivity and developing programs to study and protect endangered parrots in their natural environment. But why do we care about this? Parrots are kept in people's homes all the time, what's the big deal?
I want you to list your top three animals you think need help. Three animals that you constantly see on TV or on signs at the zoo that are in need of your assistance. Some big ones that come to my mind are Elephants, dogs in shelters, and polar bears. But did you know that Parrots need your help too?
The Indonesian Parrot Project, or IPP, is an organization who's mission is to help conserve Indonesian cockatoos, which are endangered in the wild, through actions both in the field as well as those ‘at home’. For the birds in the wild, they strive to reduce the trapping, smuggling, transport, and sale of wild cockatoos.
Yes, birds are being smuggled. These parrots are shoved in water bottles, chained to perches, transported in small cages with multiple other parrots and are found sick or dying. But there's not all bad news.
After joining IPP in 2003, Bonnie Zimmerman co-founded Kembali Bebas alongside Dr. Stewart Metz a year later. Kembali Bebas is an avian rescue, rehabilitation and release center located in North Seram, Maluku, which to this day has released over 1,200 regional species of parrots and cockatoos successfully into the wild. That is awesome.
How can you help? You can volunteer or donate money, which you should definitely do, but there's one thing you can do right from your computer or your phone.
You can share this article. You can go on their website and share their stories, videos and pictures. You can spread the word. One of the first steps to solving a problem is to bring awareness to it. So what are you waiting for? Get to typing. Get to sharing. Get to caring. Because the cute little elephants aren't the only species that desperately needs your help.
