Recently, I took part in the 2008 Roots & Shoots China Summit in Beijing. More than fifty groups were represented, MOSTLY high school and university students with a smattering of younger children. There were groups from Tianjin and Liaoning, not far from Beijing, but also from Inner Mongolia, Shandong, Guangxi, and Gansu Provinces. There was university representation from Shanghai, and a teacher and student from an area badly affected by the earthquake near Chengdu. The Guangxi and Gansu students had spent more than twenty hours on cold and crowded trains to get there, yet I saw no sign of fatigue—only eyes shining with excitement.

“Everyone knows about Roots & Shoots where I come from,” said one fifteen-year-old, “and I am so happy to be here.” Outside the temperature was a freezing nine below but inside, although there was little if any heating, the place was warmed by the infectious enthusiasm of the participants. I walked around looking at their poster boards with details of projects carried out around China by the different groups. There were children pulling exotic plants from a riverbank, studying wildlife in a wetlands area, planting trees, working in organic gardens. There was a photo of two wild Bactrian camels in the breeding center established by John Hare that is described in Hope for Animals and Their World.. Yes, said the students from Inner Mongolia, of course they knew of John—they were learning about his work.

Since Roots & Shoots was launched in 1991, there have been countless summits of this sort—national summits like the one described above, regional ones for the groups of a region or a city, and in February 2008 the first global youth leadership summit. I have taken part in summits, or festivals, all over North America, and in Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Australia, Tanzania, South Africa, and different parts of Europe. They enable R&S members to share—with one another, their families, the general public, and the media. The students are immensely proud of their projects. Teachers and parents glow with reflected glory. It is impossible to go away without a new sense of hope.

The Birth of a Program
It was in 1986 that I made the decision to leave the Gombe forest that I love in order to raise awareness about the plight of the chimpanzees and their vanishing habitats. As I traveled in different parts of the world, always learning more about the harm we have inflicted on our planet, it was hardly surprising that I met so many young people who seemed depressed, angry, or apathetic. Because, they told me, their future had been compromised and there was nothing they could do about it.

We have indeed compromised their future. There is an indigenous proverb: We have not inherited this planet from our parents: we have borrowed it from our children. But it is not true. When you borrow, there is the intention of paying back. We have been relentlessly stealing our children’s future. I have three grandchildren, and when I think of the vast harm we have inflicted on Mother Nature since I was a child, I feel a sense of desperation and anger. It is this that keeps me going, traveling some three hundred days a year, determined to spread Roots & Shoots farther and farther around the world. Because I have seen how it changes the lives of young people, gives them a sense of purpose, rekindles hope. The greatest danger to our planet is that we lose hope—especially if our youth loses hope. Without hope we give up, stop trying to do our bit to make a difference.

Roots & Shoots provides an antidote to hopelessness by encouraging young people to become involved in projects that have a positive impact on the world around them. Its most important message is that every individual matters and has a role to play—that each of us makes a difference every day. And that the cumulative result of thousands of millions of even small efforts is major change.

The program was born in Dar es Salaam in 1991 when twelve students, representatives from several secondary schools, had gathered on my veranda to learn more about the behavior of chimpanzees and other animals. And we discussed the poaching, deforestation, illegal trade in live animals, and how the dynamite used for catching fish was destroying the coral reefs and leading to erosion along the coast. The young people were upset and wanted to know more. I suggested they go back to their schools and start clubs with interested friends, and that we would try to arrange for them to get together for discussions on these issues. And that is what happened.

How amazing that from such a simple beginning the program has, by mid-2009, spread to one hundred and eleven countries with some ten thousand active groups, involving young people from preschool through university and beyond.

The name is symbolic. The first pale roots and shoot of a germinating seed look so tiny and fragile—hard to believe this can grow into a big tree. Yet there is so much life force in that seed that the roots can work their way through boulders to reach the water, and the shoot can work its way through cracks in a brick wall to reach the sunlight. Eventually, the boulders and the wall—all the harm, environmental and social, that has resulted from our greed, cruelty, and lack of understanding—will be pushed aside. And hundreds and thousands of roots and shoots, representing the youth of the world, can solve many of the problems their elders have created for them.

R&S members are young people determined to make a difference, prepared to roll up their sleeves and take action, to walk the talk. It is a youth-driven program: For the most part, it is the young people themselves who discuss local problems and decide what they can do to try to solve them. The projects they actually choose vary depending on the nature of the problems and the ages of the members, their culture, whether they are from inner-city or rural environments, and which country they come from. They work on projects about which individual group members feel passionate. Recently, we have initiated the Roots & Shoots Youth Leadership Councils, made up of young people with obvious leadership qualities—they are passionate, articulate, levelheaded, and able to inspire others. They are ambassadors for the program.

Of course, there are thousands of other youth programs around the world, but I have not yet heard of one that includes such a wide range of ages, nationalities, and cultures, and combines concern and care for the environment, animals, and the human community. This discussion about youth making a difference isn’t only about the projects undertaken by Roots & Shoots groups, although it is these that I know best What these stories illustrate is the impressive energy, determination, and courage of young people who understand what is wrong and are empowered to save endangered animals and restore their habitats. They can, indeed, make change.

Connecting with Nature
Way back in the early 1980s, I was invited to open one of the very first outdoor classrooms, where the students (mostly African American) had cleared away the trash, planted native species, made bird nest boxes, and so on. It was the brainchild of the late Tim O’Halloran, one of the most inspired teachers I have met—and I think that visit started a train of thought that would culminate in my starting Roots & Shoots ten years later.

Since the 1980s many schools have created outdoor classrooms so that their students can learn firsthand about the natural world. They vary in size, of course—it depends how much land and funding is available. But whatever its size, the children love working out doors, planting trees, watching birds using nest boxes they have made, monitoring the seasonal changes of the environment.

One of the tragedies of the urban lifestyle, compounded by the popularity of video games and the Internet, is that so many children have become increasingly separated from nature. Some inner-city schools are surrounded by concrete, and it is necessary to take nature inside. Children grow things in their classrooms and watch, with wonder, as tiny seeds sprout and flowers bloom. One group studied the transformation of frog spawn into tadpoles that grew legs and absorbed their tails until they became perfect little frogs. And then the rare treat of a trip outside the city to release their frogs in a stream.

An Old Friend and His Classroom in the Outback
The outdoor classroom of the children of the Marree Aboriginal School, in a remote area of Australia’s Northern Territory, is the desert outside the door. And there, often in scorching temperatures, they have been learning, under the mentorship of Campbell Whaley, about the native animals and plants of that harsh environment. In the infant and primary school, they are fascinated by the various lizards, especially bearded dragons, one of whom, named Sandy, has become their schoolroom mascot. Older children have a garden and learn about pests, mulching, protective fencing, and the use of medicinal plants. They learn ways to conserve precious desert water and study local weather patterns, solar energy, sustainable farming, and much more.

I met Campbell in the early 1960s when he was game ranger in southern Tanzania. He left soon after I arrived at Gombe, and we did not meet again for more than forty years—when he came to one of my lectures in Adelaide. When he learned about Roots & Shoots, he realized its potential to help the dispirited, often hopeless children and adults of the small community where he was teaching. And when next we got together in 2008, he told me how successful it had been in the three years since he started it.

“I am really passionate about Roots & Shoots,” he said. “It has had a major impact on the lives of not only the children, but their families. It has given them a new sense of purpose and self-worth.” Campbell is retired now, but continues to return to Marree regularly to encourage and advise. And he is now working with JGI-Australia to introduce R&S to Aboriginal communities around the country.

Reclaiming Lakota Culture
A similar initiative is helping the equally poor and underprivileged (and utterly hopeless) Native American youth of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. With their long history of living in harmony with the natural world, it is tragic to see how divorced from nature so many have become. But now, under the mentorship of Jason Schoch and Patricia Hammond, the young people are working in community vegetable gardens and learning about the animals and plants out on the prairies. It took time for Jason to gain the trust of this community—too many projects have been started there by the “white man,” only to be abandoned. But Patricia, a descendant of Crazy Horse and Luther Standing Bear, has both Oglala Lakota and Caucasian blood in her veins; she is in a perfect position to support Jason in building bridges between Natives and non-Natives. Said Jason: “Patricia went from a single individual with a dream of helping her Lakota people, to being empowered to bring about positive sustainable change for Lakota people because of embracing the Roots & Shoots model and mantras.”

Some of the elders are now very supportive and play an important role in the program, sharing the old traditional stories; explaining how various indigenous plants were used for food, medicine, and so forth; and helping the young people to discover and take pride in their cultural roots and their language. Roots & Shoots is now growing (—slowly—) in other Native American communities in partnership with other programs designed to help Native American youth. We are particularly delighted to work with McClellan “Mac” Hall who has, for many years, run the highly successful Native Indian Youth Leadership Program that introduces Native American youth to the outdoors. Mac is a man with a passion and he has reached out to us, as we have to him; we have joined forces and are thus impacting the lives of more Native American youth.

Trees, Trees, and More Trees
When Roots & Shoots first began in Tanzania, schools were typically surrounded by sunbaked and utterly desolate earth; planting trees there was one of the very first activities of our clubs. As those first trees grew, grasses survived in the shade below them, more plants appeared, and soil erosion was gradually controlled. When I visit one of those schools today, and see students sitting in the shade of tall trees during their breaks, I can scarcely believe it can be the same place. Nsaa-Iya Kihunrwa was one of the original twelve students. He planted many seedlings back then; now, he says, “When I pass by those schools, I feel proud that I contributed so positively to the environment seventeen years ago.” Having spent time in business, Kihunrwa has recently become Roots & Shoots national director for Tanzania.

Many of the schools in Tanzania have started tree nurseries and distribute seedlings to other schools in the neighborhood so that trees are growing in more and more schoolyards—all the students, not only R&S group members, benefit and learn the importance of protecting trees.

Today tree planting, especially in the tropics, is seen as a way of minimizing the effect of the carbon emissions that are leading to climate change. All around the world, groups of young people, including Roots & Shoots, have planted and cared for millions of trees. I myself have joined the groups to plant scores of trees in at least thirty countries over the years. I always insist on using my hands rather than a shovel—and I always kiss one of the leaves to encourage the tree to grow big and strong!

In 2008, our Roots & Shoots Youth Leadership Council initiated the “Rebirth the Earth” campaign, paralleling Wangiri Mathai’s Green Belt Movement.Young people plant seedlings across America, and at the same time raise money for tree nurseries in schools in Tanzania.

Restoring Habitats
All over the world, children are lending willing hands to the task of putting to rights places that we have despoiled. They are helping to restore wetlands, clean creeks and streams, remove alien vegetation, and encourage native plants to grow again in habitats from which they had been driven. I visited children in Fort Worth, Texas, who had been working for over a year, after school and during weekends, to clear trash and invasive plants from a small area of remnant prairie. It was hard work—they took me out there, and I had a go at pulling up some of the recalcitrant non-native vegetation. The children had recently raised money to fence the area off from neighborhood dogs, and they told me with much excitement about the birds and small mammals that were returning. Another group helped to restore a unique ecosystem in a Chicago suburb that had been seriously harmed by storm and wastewater pouring from a newly constructed shopping mall. This had created an artificial canyon and enabled a thick growth of invasive buckthorn to colonize the area. Eventually, the contractors blocked the illegal flow and burned off much of the brush. The Roots & Shoots group then cleared away more of the buckthorn as well as a great deal of charred material, and planted woodland grass seeds that they had collected, in readiness, the previous fall. Now the wildlife has benefited, and the general public is becoming increasingly aware of the potential of this area—and more willing to contribute toward protecting it.

A group of primary school children from the Chicago area tackled a different kind of problem. They heard that Perrier planned to put a bottling plant up near the spring of their local stream. With the help of their teacher, the children interviewed the inhabitants of the small town where the factory was planned, finding out about the economic benefits that people were expecting. They interviewed conservationists and biologists and fishermen from selected areas along the waterway. The students concluded that the economic benefits to a few people could not justify the harm to the environment, and so they wrote up and presented their results to the Environmental Protection Agency. It turned out that no Environment Impact Assessment had yet been carried out. And when this took place, as the law requires, it reached the same conclusion as the children! The factory was not built.

Helping Animals in Captivity
Washo Shadowhawk of the Washo tribe, was thirteen years old when I visited his school in Oregon and he was inspired to start a Roots & Shoots group. One of their first projects was to help the monkeys in their tiny cages in the Oregon Regional Primate Research Center. The children learned about the monkey’s behavior in the wild, and made and distributed toys and puzzle boxes with food rewards inside, to enrich the lives of the prismates, alleviate their crippling boredom. That was six years ago, and Washo recently told me that although the Primate Research Center has a ways to go, it continues to make positive changes, such as group housing and clicker training (which doesn’t isolate individual monkeys for treatment). They also allowed the R&S groups to plant bamboo for the monkeys. As a result of the positive work that R&S has accomplished at the local Center, Washo is reaching out to six other primate centers to see if R&S groups can help their monkeys as well.

Many other Roots & Shoots groups—in South Africa, China, Singapore, Japan, India, and Israel, as well as throughout the United States—are involved in similar enrichment activities to improve the lives of animals in zoos.

This is not the place to start a discussion on the ethics of zoos. It is important, however, to note that more and more zoos have developed excellent education programs, and some are actively involved in conservation projects in the countries from which their animals come. And increasingly these zoos are providing schoolchildren, including Roots & Shoots groups, opportunities to learn more about wild animals from different parts of the world and the problems they face. This often leads to children becoming involved in raising awareness and funds for various conservation projects. One Roots & Shoots group, for example, recently set up a stand outside the sloth bear exhibit in the Metro Zoo, Florida, to solicit help for these bears in India where they are still forced to “dance” in the hot dusty streets. And a Roots & Shoots group in Sweden is raising awareness and funds to help John Hare and the wild Bactrian camel. (The full story about John’s efforts to save the wild Bactrian camels appears in our book.)

The Exotic Pet Trade
There are many young people who want to help wild animals, and many are lending a hand to counteracting the exotic pet trade. Pets are all too often released into the surrounding countryside where they may die—or thrive and compete with native animals. In Arizona, a Roots & Shoots group found a tiny turtle under the swings in the local park. They did some research and found out it was a hatchling red-eared slider, a non-native species, and that these turtles may carry a strain of salmonella that can be deadly to young children. They shared their findings with other R&S members so that when another member saw a man with a tub full of hatchling turtles for sale, she knew to call the Arizona Department of Game and Fish.

Some of the members subsequently volunteered to help with the trapping of non-native turtles in the waters outside of the Phoenix Zoo; other children provided information to zoo visitors about the reason for turtle trapping and correct procedures for handling unwanted pets. Meanwhile, Squirt, the rescued hatchling, grew fast, has become a group mascot, and will feature in a planned pet education program. (It is not, of course, the pets who will be educated!)

In Los Angeles, John Zavelny—who with his wife, Darleen, has been a dynamic supporter of Roots & Shoots since the beginning—is the official custodian of animals confiscated by USFWS from the illegal pet trade. His Roots & Shoots group helps to care for them until they can be relocated. Some of the children are so dedicated that they go in regularly to attend to the animals throughout weekends and holidays. They are now passionate about stopping this trafficking.

Some Inspired Youth
Several of our youth council members have been working to help wild animals since they were young children. Ever since he was a small child Washo Shadowhawk, (mentioned earlier), has rescued, rehabilitated and released local wild animals of all sorts—especially snakes. Over the years he started visiting the pet stores in and around his hometown, which sold all kinds of exotic, often endangered animals. By building positive, respectful relationships with the owners, he was able to convince them to buy captive-bred animals and get help for the ones that arrive injured rather than destroying them. They pet store owners even allow him to adopt the sick endangered animals and nurse it back to health.

Washo also attends the local “Wild Animal Expos”in an effort to warn and educate prospective buyers about care, feeding and what to expect when the animal grows to full size. Many of the animals sold at these expos have been wild caught from local areas and are having devastating effects on current populations of native species. Others are exotic animals from around the world that are often endangered or dangerous.

Chase Pickering has specialized in helping injured raptors. He introduced Roots & Shoots at his school in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2003, and he and his group of thirty students raised more than thirty-five hundred dollars to construct a sixty-foot pre-release flight cage for injured and orphaned birds of prey. Sometimes he helps with an education program that uses permanently injured hawks and owls to help children understand the plight of these magnificent birds, prisoners forever because they can no longer fly.

Nepal hosts one of the most hardworking and dedicated Roots & Shoots groups anywhere, in large part thanks to the leadership of Manoj Gautan. In Hope for Animals and Their World I describe how his group is working to help the highly endangered Asian vultures. As well, they have persuaded many of the snake charmers in Kathmandu to hand over their animals; after a period of rehabilitation, these can sometimes be released into the wild.

Recently, because the wildlife authorities have no place to keep confiscated animals (and the zoo is totally unsuitable), they asked Manoj if Roots & Shoots would care for a leopard cub that had been confiscated. Of course, the group had no place for it, either! But members looked after it in one of their houses until they raised money to build a rescue center. Now Manoj is working with wildlife officials to find the most appropriate solution for the long-term future of the leopard.

Manoj, his brother Prabin, and a few others sometimes get involved in trying to tackle the flourishing illegal wildlife trade—I worry for their safety.

Turtles in Trouble
Countless young people are doing what they can to help animals in their natural environment. They learn about, and whenever possible go out and study, a whole variety of local creatures, from house sparrows to salamanders. During a field trip in California, a group was observing freshwater turtles and learned that they need safe places—such as stumps, rocks, or islands in ponds or slow-moving water—to get out of the water and warm up. If there aren’t any, they must bask on shore, where they are more susceptible to predation. And so, when the students saw turtles on shore and realized there were no safe places nearby, they decided to create a “Turtle Basking Raft” of lightweight logs lashed together.

“Without a boat,” they said, “we weren’t able to get a raft out in the middle of the pond. We pushed it with a long stick and then threw the anchor as far as we could. The next day there were a dozen turtles on it!”

On the other side of the world, in Australia, there are turtles in desperate trouble, and a group of concerned and energetic children is working to help them. I learned about this when I went to visit Campbell Whalley in the small Millang community where—except for when he is back in the desert—he spends the busy days of his retirement. For the Roots & Shoots children of the local primary school, Lake Alexandrina is their backyard. Nowhere is there a more compelling example of the consequences of our meddling with nature. In this case it has led, among other things, to horrible suffering for the local eastern long-necked and Murray short-necked turtles.

Alexandrina is one of the Lower Lakes in the Murray Darling River Basin, close to where the river empties into the ocean. At least, it used to. But in 2008, due to drought and the irresponsible and unsustainable funneling off of water—for inappropriate agricultural irrigation, for example, or to encourage new developments in areas where water is naturally scarce—the flow into the ocean stopped altogether. Instead, the lower reaches of the river and the Lower Lakes became contaminated by water from the ocean. As a result, a small seawater parasitic tube worm invaded the lake. It grows like a coral, attaching itself onto hard surfaces—including the shells of the turtles. There the encrustation grows so rapidly that the shells become too heavy for the turtles to swim. Eventually they can no longer withdraw their heads or flippers – which are gnawed off by foxes.

The Roots & Shoots children, along with their teachers, parents, and—so far as I could tell—most of the community, are working to help these turtles. The walls of the school are lined with photographs, drawings, and press cuttings about the situation. I saw some of the heavily encrusted shells of dead turtles—it is horrific, truly grotesque. The children regularly search the lakeshore, gather up all encrusted turtles, and clean them back in their school. At first they released them into salt-free areas farther up the river, but scientists are afraid that this might spread the tubeworm invasion, so the school is caring for them until a suitable plan for their future has been designed.

The children took me to the shed where about eighty turtles were beginning to wake up from their winter hibernation. And then we walked toward the contaminated lake across sand that, until recently, had been covered by fresh water. One of the children turned to me: “We used to swim here,” she said.

Helping Sea Turtles
Sea turtles swim vast distances through the oceans and lay their eggs along the beaches. They are ancient and fascinating animals, and they are in trouble. Their numbers are declining due to hunting for food, predation on their eggs (especially by humans), habitat destruction, pollution, and entanglement in fishing nets. Many organizations around the world are working to protect beaches where turtles come ashore to nest, and Roots & Shoots members, along with many other youth groups, are volunteering to help. They patrol the beaches during the egg-laying season to protect the females and their nests, and they escort the hatchlings to the sea.

Alexander “Zander” Srodes has been a passionate advocate for sea turtles since, during a family vacation to Little Gasparilla Island, he was taken on beach patrols by a local turtle watcher. Zander, who in 2009 is an eighteen-year-old senior in high school in Florida, gave his first sea turtle conservation lecture at the age of eleven. He created an interactive educational program, “Turtle Talks,” that has been given in front of thousands of students and adults at fifty schools, nine libraries, and eight nature events. Recently, he wrote Turtle Talks, an educational activity book for young children—and has distributed more than a hundred thousand free copies. It has been translated into Spanish and French, and the Spanish versions have made their way to Costa Rica, Honduras, and Guatemala. During the past two spring breaks Zander and other Turtle Talk teammates have traveled to Grande Rivière in Trinidad to educate schoolchildren there. A truly inspirational young man who has now joined forces with our Roots & Shoots members.

.IN Chennai (Madras), India, a group of dedicated youth serve as Turtle Ambassadors. Their mentor, Supraja Dhiranee, has been a true champion for these animals ever since she came upon an olive ridley turtle lying dead on the beach. Recently, Roots & Shoots has partnered her own organization, trees, and in 2005 I went to Chennai and met the young men. They had come from coastal villages about fifteen miles away in their small canoes, each fitted with a tiny outboard engine. They visit the fishing villages along the shore, explaining the plight of the turtles—about which they themselves have become passionate, thus making it easier for them to win the fishermen to their cause. And they protect the female turtles and their nests during the breeding season. Initially five villages were involved, but the turtle conservation program has expanded to include twenty-four villages and stretches along forty-seven miles of coastline! The Forestry Department has agreed to provide guards, and hatcheries have been established in four of the villages so that more eggs can be watched over. In the last five years, 26,162 turtle hatchlings have been escorted to the sea.

After a Roots & Shoots turtle celebration, we said good-bye to the Turtle Ambassadors. As they set off in their canoes, silhouetted against the sunset, I had a lump in my throat. But for the turtles they would, Supraja said, probably be out of work, drinking and taking drugs. Instead they are filled with pride in what they are doing to help the beleaguered turtles. And they know, too, that the turtles are helping them, for trees has provided medical camps for the fishing villages.

The Problem of the Raiding Baboons
A Roots & Shoots group in rural Tanzania, under the mentorship of Deus Cosmos, tackled a different kind of problem—baboons moving out from the forest to raid the farmland around their village. This happens all over Africa, of course, but in this case the farmers were retaliating by setting fire to the forest, thus making the situation much worse. Deus had been an active Roots & Shoots member in his secondary school. He had visited Gombe and been fascinated to learn about the baboon study there. He shared his knowledge with his students, who then went to visit the farmers to discuss the bad situation.

The more the forest was burned, they said, the less food would be available to the baboons, and the more desperate they would become. Eventually, they made a plan. When crops ripened, the students took turns waiting to chase the baboons away. And they collected the seeds of the food plants the baboons favored out in the forest, and planted them to begin restoration of the burned area. That year, the hostility between man and monkey significantly decreased—and the children, who had never left their tiny village before, traveled to Sweden to receive a prestigious Volvo environmental award for an “innovative project.”

It was that project that inspired the Monkey Ambassadors in Hong Kong, a group of high school students who, after received training from national park staff, tried to persuade visitors to the Monkey Parks not to feed the very tame and overconfident Macaque monkeys. The program is beginning to make a difference, and the students are hoping for government funding to launch an education program in the schools near the parks.

Most recently I visited a forest reserve in Singapore where there are similar problems with the long tailed Macaques. A group of university studies made an imaginative and moving video about the problems of the monkeys from the perspective of a young female.

Butterflies—or Flutterbies?
R&S groups around the world are involved in studying and conserving butterflies. In Taiwan, after the terrible earthquake of 2002, I went to visit one of the schools that had been devastated. The students were doing their work in a huge marquee. The one structure undamaged was their butterfly house, and the children were so excited to tell me that none of their butterflies had been harmed. I think it gave them something to hang on to during those terrible days.

Taiwan was once known as Formosa, Land of the Butterflies, but as a result of widespread development and habitat destruction, many butterfly species have already become extinct, and many others are endangered. Roots & Shoots groups across the island (there are 540 or more in Taiwan) are actively engaged in helping to protect and restore their butterflies through a program they call Green Thumb, encouraging their schools to use plants native to the area on campus instead of the usual ornamentals. If enough schools take part, it is hoped that this will provide A network of patches of suitable habitat across the country, so that butterflies of different species can fly from one to another.

In North America, the monarch butterfly is threatened along its migratory route from Mexico to Canada by destruction of habitat and the use of pesticides. The Poinsettia Roots & Shoots group in California, started by ex-Gombe student Nancy Merrick, has worked intensively to learn about monarchs and raise awareness about the problems they face. The children help with the annual monarch counts, and showed me how to stick minute identification numbers onto a monarch’s delicate wings. This group—including Nancy—invariably attends any Roots & Shoots gathering wearing headbands sprouting antennae, and wire and fabric monarch wings sewn onto their shirts.

Before I leave the subject of butterflies, I cannot help but speculate, as an aside, that they must have got their name as a result of some error in an early manuscript. These exquisite insects are in no way connected with “butter.” Nor do they resemble “flies.” What they do, as we take joy in their dancing flight and often brilliant colors, is to flutter by. I personally choose to call them “flutterbies”!

Fund-Raising and Awareness Raising
Young people are excellent fund-raisers, and all around the world they are donating money to a variety of projects to help the environment and animals. At the same time, they are influencing their parents and raising awareness.

In 2000, eight-year-old Allie Morris started the SOS Roots & Shoots group in Santa Barbara to help publicize the plight and raise money for the endangered Channel Island foxes, which we feature on this website I first met the group at a Roots & Shoots festival.

“We really, really have to save these foxes,” Allie told me. Six years later, I talked with some of the people who had worked so hard to do just that—including all the members of the SOS R&S group, three of whom (including Allie) had been with the project since it began. Working with the Channel Islands National Park staff and the Santa Barbara Zoo, this Roots & Shoots group has held fund-raisers, educated thousands of Southern Californians at festivals, and sought support from public and elected officials. Susan, Allie’s mother, told me that they had made presentations to the mayor and city councils of Ventura and Oxnard and to their members of Congress—who inserted mention of SOS Roots & Shoots in the Congressional Record!

Nine-year-old Luke Zitwal, a R&S member from Utah, is passionate about helping the prairie dogs that are, as DISCUSSED IN HOPE FOR ANIMALS ETC (we have seen), ARE being exterminated across their range. He went all the way to the senate floor in Utah to establish a day to honor these delightful animals. Recently, he met with Representative Tim Cosgrove at the state capitol in Utah, and they have made plans to meet with the chairman of the agriculture committee of the state senate to discuss his prairie dog day bill. If this chair can be won over, Luke’s bill will move forward for consideration by the entire state senate. In a separate initiative, a group in Denver is raising money to send educational materials to all Roots & Shoots groups across the prairie dog’s range.

Changing Attitudes in China
Some children are born into a culture or a family that does not respect or truly understand animals or nature. It is, of course, often difficult to change cultural attitudes toward animals or anything else, but it is certainly not impossible—cultural practices can and do change over time. When I first visited China in 1994, I was told that I would be shocked by the cruelty to animals but that there would be little or nothing I could do because this was a “part of the Chinese cultural attitude.” Yet I met many young people who cared passionately about animals, and the R&S philosophy fell on fertile ground. Two years after R&S was introduced into a big Chinese primary school in Beijing, a seven-year-old boy told me he had found a wounded bird and taken it home to look after it.

“My mother did not want it in the house,” he said, “but in the end she let it come in—and the bird got better and flew away.”

During my third visit to China, I met secondary school student Fang Ming. He told me he had read a Chinese translation of In the Shadow of Man when he was twelve years old, and it changed the way he thought about animals. He lives in Cang Nan County, Zhejiang Province, where the people traditionally eat wild animals of almost all species. He decided to follow the hunters to see how they caught the animals, and was horrified by the cruelty. He went back to take photos—even though he was threatened. Next, Fang Ming photographed the cruelty in the meat markets. He showed all his photos at school, and he and his friends shared them with their parents; many people were shocked.

Fang Ming was seventeen years old when learned about our program and started the Green Eyes Roots & Shoots clubs, with groups in four schools. They are very active, organizing trips into the country to learn about wildlife, and educating the local people. They held a Bird Awareness Week at the County People’s Square—the county’s first-ever big environmental protection event. Several of the boys now brave the danger of following poachers and have given the local forestry officials information leading to the arrest of animal traders.

Fang Ming was invited to one of our Roots & Shoots festival in Beijing and gave two major TV interviews. He is an impassioned speaker. The sight of this young man with tears streaming down his face as he described some of the cruelty to animals must have influenced hundreds of people in China.

There are other young Chinese who care just as passionately. Today Roots & Shoots groups across the country are not only working on environmental projects but raising awareness—and sometimes money—to help a variety of endangered species.

In 2006, Shanghai Roots & Shoots intern Liu Tong—his English name is Tony—attended a lecture about the highly endangered Manchurian tiger. Because of habitat loss, lack of food, and poaching, there are only 425 to 500 of them left in the world, and within China there are no more than 15.

“The lecturer wanted volunteers to go to the Hunchun Reserve in the north of China and help remove the wire snares set by the local people,” Tony told me when we met in Shanghai. “I could hardly believe that out of the sixteen of us who were there, no one but me volunteered to try to help such a beautiful animal.”

It was a tough assignment. He started each day at three thirty in the morning in the freezing dark and trudged through deep snow along forest trails until three o’clock in the afternoon looking for snares. “I could not even take food with me,” said Tony. “It would have frozen before it got to my mouth. Brrr!” He almost shivered as he remembered—and so did I! But many snares were collected, and his eyes shone as he told me of the day he had come across the tracks of a tiger in the snow. “They were huge!” he said.

Tony had also learned something of the desperate poverty of the peasants in the area, and we discussed what might be done to improve their lives so that there would be no need for them to set snares and compete with the tigers for their prey.

In the winter of 2007, defying the subzero conditions, Tony went back—and stayed for three whole weeks. No wonder we call him Tiger Tony! This time there were more than sixty volunteers, and between them they worked in all six of the tiger habitats in Jilin and Heilongjiang Provinces. The program is growing, and a number of Roots & Shoots groups are raising money to help efforts to save the Manchurian tiger.

Changing Attitudes in Africa
I have visited China once a year (save during the SARS outbreak) since 1994, and I have borne witness to the growing concern for animals and the environment. It will be much harder, and it will take longer, to change the attitude of people living in the forests of Central Africa. In their culture, all animals in the bush are suitable food. For years they have hunted sustainably, killing simply what they need to survive. But this changed when foreign logging companies, building roads deep into the forests, provided a way for hunting to become commercial. Hunters shoot everything and truck the meat to the cities, where the urban elite will pay a high price for this bushmeat—it is their cultural preference. Clearly, this aspect of their culture must change, for the rate of killing is quite unsustainable. And in the Lugufu Refugee Camp in Tanzania, where a hundred thousand people made their temporary home after fleeing the violence in eastern Congo, we have evidence that change is possible.

It was hardly surprising, given their background, that some of the young men began to go on illegal hunting trips in the bush around the camp.

We started Roots & Shoots there not only to try to bring hope to the refugees, many of whom were traumatized by the terrible things that they had endured or witnessed, but also to raise awareness about the devastating effects of the bushmeat trade. The program was initiated by Hamid Hosseini, an Iranian who had worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in the Kigoma region for many years. He was followed by a succession of three outstanding young Tanzanian Roots & Shoots graduates—Jaffet Jonas, Revocatus Edwards, and Shadrack Mishak. None of them had had special Roots & Shoots training—they had simply been involved in clubs in their own secondary schools. Yet (as is the case with many other Tanzanians) that experience had so changed their own attitudes toward animals and the environment that they were able to influence some of the children, teachers, and parents in the camp.

Between Among them Jaffet, Revocatus, and Shadrack started active clubs in fifteen schools, and the attitudes of the children began to change. I noticed this during my first visit when I was shown the tiny restaurant opened by a group of twelve- to fourteen-year-old Roots & Shoots members. It was a simple hut with four little tables where they served food grown in their garden. And on one of the whitewashed walls was a really good painting of a chimpanzee with a bowl of food in front of him.

“We want everyone who eats here to remember that animals matter, too,” said the fourteen-year-old artist solemnly.

Next I heard the story of twelve-year-old Eca Kimba and her friend Rashidi Dieu Donne. One day when they were collecting firewood, with four other children, they found a baby bushbuck. This would have been a treat for the families, for there is not much meat in the camps.

“Our friends chased and caught the baby and were about to kill it . . . but as Roots & Shoots members, Rashidi and I could not let the others kill this little animal,” Eca wrote in her report of the incident. “Not only is it illegal but this beautiful creature has as much right to live as we do.”

A very big argument followed but finally the group let the little animal go “so it could be with its mother and live as it should—free.”

When their parents heard about the incident they were angry but, wrote Eca, “It didn’t matter that we got punished, we felt great for having saved the life of the bush buck and our head teacher was very proud and congratulated us. And I hope that some day we will see that bush buck in the forest and that he will look at us and recognize us as the humans who took him back to his mother because we knew that his life was just as important as ours.”

Lubunga Sumaili, a dynamic teacher from Lualaba primary school, had tears in his eyes when told me the story. “If you understand the Congolese attitude toward wild animals, you can hardly believe that this could happen,” he said. But it happened and, what’s more, it happened again: Roots & Shoots member Regina Etambo also saved an animal’s life.

She and her friend Mapendo found a tortoise. Mapendo picked it up and started carrying it back to the camp to eat—for the meat is considered a tasty delicacy. This started a huge fight: “I was not going to let the tortoise die,” wrote Regina, “and she was determined to eat it.”

In the end, the tortoise did go back to the camp—but as Regina’s pet. “Now the tortoise is a good friend who constantly reminds us that we are a part of the animal kingdom, not better than it,” said Regina. “I shall continue to take care of the tortoise as if it were a member of my family—because it truly is!”

Fanning the Spark
Because Roots & Shoots has been successful in inspiring enthusiasm and commitment in so many young people it seems important to scatter the seeds widely And so we partner with as many like-minded organizations as possible. Chase Pickering became our first US Roots & Shoots Youth Fellow, traveling across the country to schools, talking about endangered wildlife and other environmental issues, encouraging young people to become involved, roll up their sleeves, and make a difference. He helped to plan and develop the Roots & Shoots Youth Leadership Councils. These youth leaders are playing an ever more important role in organizing festivals and summits where young people meet, exchange ideas, and spread the Roots & Shoots spirit of optimism and can-do attitude.

Akilah Sanders-Reed, a recent member of The Four Corners Youth Leadership Council, provides just one example of this can-do attitude. She established her own R&S group for children five to ten years of age just four months after joining herself. Her group meets weekly to work on projects helping endangered species and the local environment, and also families in need. She is helping the group move toward longer and more far-reaching projects by working in collaboration with two other NGOs.

Those who have been part of Roots & Shoots tend to remain loyal to its principles as they move into the adult world and become the next generation of lawyers and doctors, corporate heads and politicians, teachers and parents, and so on. Recently, I attended an international environmental conference in Tanzania. During my talk, of course I spoke of Roots & Shoots—I always do. Afterward there was time for only six questions from the audience of about three hundred businessmen, government officials, and various NGO members. And two of those questions, randomly picked by the facilitator, came from Tanzanians who prefaced their queries with glowing remarks about the effect of the Roots & Shoots programs in their schools, which had given all the students and teachers a new understanding of the importance of the environment and their responsibilities as stewards.

A Youth Leadership Summit
For me it was a dream come true when in February 2008, one hundred young people, mostly aged eighteen through twenty-four, from twenty-eight countries got together to attend the first Jane Goodall Global Youth Leadership Summit in Florida. For a whole week, they exchanged ideas, shared their experiences, and made friends. They divided into discussion groups, choosing topics ranging from peace and reconciliation to world hunger, poverty, human rights, and of course wildlife conservation. As I listened in, moved sometimes to tears by the eloquence, passion, and determination of these young people, I desperately wished that all politicians and decision makers could be there to listen. One of the many exciting outcomes was the formation of the Global Youth Council for Wildlife Conservation. Subsequently the group created a website and Facebook page, keeping in touch with one another as their plans developed. Their first project is helping Manoj and the Nepal Roots & Shoots with their wildlife rehabilitation center.

Providing Hope in Dark Times
Roots & Shoots offers hope in a dark and dangerous time. It was designed to be flexible so that groups can grow and flourish anywhere, and in each country and each community it develops slightly differently. It links young people around the globe in a deep and meaningful way, for not only do they share their projects and learn from one another’s successes and failures, but they also learn to better understand the problems faced by people from different backgrounds. Thus the program instills understanding, respect, and compassion for people, animals, and the natural world. It is encouraging the new generations to realize that there are more important things in life than material wealth—we need enough money to live, but we should not live for money. And most importantly, it helps young people understand the value of their own contributions to making the world a better place.

Roots & Shoots Young Entrepreneurs
Nicole Halpin lives in Jackson, Wyoming, close to Yellowstone National Park, and has been passionately interested in wildlife throughout her childhood. A couple of years ago, when she was eleven years old, she was driving into town when she saw something lying on a snowbank—it was a trumpeter swan. Nicole started to cry, “Help it! Help it!” But he was dead: He had hit a power line in the fog and broken his neck.

Nicole began asking questions, and was devastated to find that several other swans had been killed in the same way. She talked to her dad and grandpa, and they decided that a one-mile stretch of power lines needed to be buried—which would cost a lot of money. But Nicole was determined, and soon the Jackson papers carried a story about the little girl and her mission—and the Associated Press picked it up. The first donation that arrived was a jar of coins, totaling $166.10, from some kids in Colorado who had read the story and wanted to help. And that was the start of Nicole’s Save the Swans Fund, to which many local residents contributed. The following summer, Nicole put a little card, explaining the need for funds, in each of the guest rooms at her parents’ ranch—and this resulted in donations totaling twelve thousand dollars! The fund also received other money totaling forty thousand dollars, as well as in-kind service from the power and construction companies. This meant that, in cooperation with the Jackson Hole Wildlife Foundation, Nicole’s Save the Swan Fund was able to bury the power lines. I wonder how many swans (and perhaps other birds) have been saved?

Eleven-year-old Lucia Kittay-Pierson raised three thousand dollars in one year, making animal buttons and raffling donated stuffed toys to help endangered animals, and her determination inspired many around her to help wildlife. Another eleven-year-old, Amanda K., raised $540 selling drinks from her “Lemonade for Chimp Aid” stand at a swimming competition in New Jersey; the following year she did even better and gave us $712.

“Do what you think is right, and something great will come out of it,” is Amanda’s advice to others who want to help. And indeed, children think of many ways to raise funds: through bake sales, doing odd jobs for people, and sponsored activities of all kinds—walks, bike rides, even keeping silent!

Joseph Shaw donated the money he won from friends who betted he would not cut off his long, thin pigtail.

Two brothers offered an organic lawn-mowing service using a donkey—with manure thrown in for free! I am always especially touched by those who ask that their friends make donations to JGI to help the chimpanzees rather then spend money on birthday presents, and by the increasing number who send us the money they received for their bar or bat mitzvahs. And they save up their pocket money to make donations to causes that inspire them.

Back in the days when the post to Tanzania was very slow and unreliable, I eventually received a letter written by a seven-year-old boy in America. Attached to the letter with Scotch Tape was one US quarter. He wrote that he could not send me much money for the chimpanzees yet, though he would when he was older. And he ended: “I shall be holding my breath until you write back to me!”

Some of our Roots & Shoots groups are raising money to help Operation Migration continue with its efforts to establish a second population of migrating whooping cranes. Mike Weddel, who helped us to start Roots & Shoots in the United States, inspired his group in Salem, Oregon, to raise money so that shepherds in the Himalayas can build strong fences around their sheep at night to protect them from snow leopards—thus saving the snow leopards from being shot. Other groups are raising funds for Jill Robinson, who started Animals Asia to help the sun bears from the bear farms in China, where many are kept in cages so small that they cannot lie down. Their bile is regularly extracted through implanted catheters that cause intense pain. Jill has persuaded the Chinese authorities to close many of the farms and built a marvelous sanctuary for the rescued bears.

Jay Vavra was one of the very first Roots & Shoots volunteers. Since the program began at High Tech High School in San Diego, his Roots & Shoots group has embarked on an immensely ambitious project—studying the history, wildlife, and pollution of the San Diego Bay, resulting in the publication of two books. In 2008, after spending four years exploring conservation forensics and the use of DNA as a means for species identification in the bushmeat crisis, the group went on an expedition to northern Tanzania to discuss solutions to the bushmeat crisis.

During the expedition of a lifetime, they lived with three tribes (Maasai, Iraqw, and Hadza) in order to understand their wildlife management practices, got close to the wildlife inside and outside the national parks, interviewed and fostered international partnerships with anti-poaching officials and park wardens, and discussed the future of the bushmeat crisis with the Mweka Wildlife College Mentor Fellows. They plan to compile their video footage, photography, and interviews to create a documentary to raise awareness of the African bushmeat crisis and support continued collaboration in East Africa.