The Clouded Leopard Trip Index - Trip by the Numbers

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I've always loved the Harper's Index, so I thought I'd try to do a "trip by the numbers" section for our team. Wendy, Karen and I brainstormed on the plane home and came up with some of these statistics representing our team experience. Enjoy!

5 - Number of types of pork products that can be integrated into one bowl of soup in Thailand

5 - Number of Imodium tablets consumed on the trip

2 - Number of boxes of cold medicine consumed by our team

6 - Number of bugs eaten

1 - Number of likely insane tuk-tuk drivers we encountered

4 - Number of ticks found on team members

1 - Number of leeches found on team members

4 - Number of wild Clouded leopard tracks spotted

4 - Number of types of animals I hadn't really heard of before this trip (pangolin, gaur, banteng and civets (3-4 types on this trip))

1- Number of times our friend Kanda fell into the salt lick

3 - Number of times I fell into rivers or streams

3000 - Approximate number of photos taken (18 CDs worth!)

7 - Number of wild elephants we saw

12 - Number of songs written and performed about Khao Yai National Park

3- Number of ranger-written songs about Khao Yai ranger substations

1 - Number of skinned rats, skinned dog heads, and skinned pig heads spotted in local markets (1 each, and the dog head was in Hanoi)

1- Number of whole chickens taken on the backpacking trip to the ranger substation

1 - Number of domestic baby elephants we touched

0 - Number of bathrooms in Thailand equipped with toilet seats and toilet paper

Unreported - Number of challenges reported using said squat toilets

1- Number of times we spotted women salvaging straws from the trash and rinsing them in the bathroom for reuse in the market food stalls!

29- Number of Clouded leopards at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo breeding center

100,000+ - Approximate number of dollars our Zoo Society, zoo and fundraising partners will jointly commit to conservation this year!

I will send out a post after our Conservation Committee meets at the end of the year to designate our Conservation funds so you know what we're supporting in the coming year. I'll also send you a final post to invite you to the Brown Bag Lunch presentation about the project.

As a team, one of the most important things the experience reinforced to us is the importance of having the kind of smart, hard-working conservation partners working in country that we're lucky to have. Without a local perspective, our best efforts could truly miss the mark, but working in partnership with friends like WildAid and ENV, we have many opportunities to expand our work protecting wildlife. We're lucky to work with some very smart, committed people who are doing the very best they can with the resources they have available.

Thank you to all who've been following along! Now that I'm back on high speed Internet access, I am so pleased to see that so many of the Zoo Society's major donors and board members have been subscribing to this blog! (I was counting on my family reading it, but I'm honored that many of you who aren't obligated by blood relations have elected to follow along!) I hope it gives you a sense of how important your support is and the implications it has for our role as a partner in protecting and preserving wildlife and wild places.

Hope to see you at the zoo sometime soon!
Brynn

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Comments

[Dan]

support your zoo!
glad to be following along!