Shamballah

For longer than I can even remember, I have always had a deep and abiding love for animals of all kinds. Until recently, however, this love of wildlife has been largely passive; I've done some volunteering at wildlife rehabilitation centers and the Humane Society, I do birding and whatnot, but I haven't done much to really help the creatures I'm so passionate about. I have a particular interest in large carnivores and in birds of all types (although I have a real fondness for corvids.)

I've been thinking hard about what I want to do with my life of late, and one answer that keeps bubbling up is that I want to help preserve wildlife populations and help with overall ecological conservation. Since I have nothing but time currently, I've become a volunteer tour guide at Wolf Haven, and have been admitted to the Wildlife Sciences Graduate Program at the University of Washington here in Seattle. It's a long road ahead, but it's of great importance to me.

What I would really like to do is to help educate people about wildlife and ecology; get people interested in and passionate about helping to rectify the overwhelming damage we've done (and are doing) to the ecosystems all over the planet. As a career, I believe helping people come to understand animals' behaviors, needs, and unique abilities would be very rewarding. If people begin to love and appreciate wildlife, perhaps more will respect the animals and their habitats, and work to protect them. The Earth belonged to them long before we came around, but we're treating it as though it's here solely for our purposes.

This page was very out of date, and the redesign is only just getting started, but I'm hoping to have a variety of useful information and links here for other people interested in wildlife, ecology and conservation. With the exception of the wolf page, the animal pages themselves are hideously old. The wolf page is about halfway done with the update. I'm planning to turn this area into a repository for conservation information in general, too. Stay tuned.

Two important links, right off, although they are somewhat out of date, and I can't seem to find a current version of them:

Companies that DO perform animal testing
Companies that DO NOT perform animal testing

Please support those companies which are cruelty-free by purchasing their products, linking to their websites, and passing the word along to your friends. Likewise, please do not support those companies who do perform unnecessary and inhumane animal testing.