We’re inviting you to a grand celebration of our planet and its amazing and diverse environments. In front of the Amani Oasis aviary, we’ll have special explorations of the three prime elements of earth, air, and water. You’ll be able to get up close and personal with conservation concepts unique to these elements and take part in hands-on experiments exploring those worlds.

Alongside these displays, our dedicated Junior Keepers will be presenting a recycled jungle and we’ll have some partner organizations hanging out with us as well; the California State Parks, Sonoma Land Trust, Petaluma Wildlife Museum, and Sonoma Snow Leopard Conservancy to name a few!

As with all our special events, your reservation grants you full access to our lower grounds where cheetahs, lemurs, monkeys, and flamingos frolic and play. And if that’s not enough, we’ll also have our famous Nairobi minibus out running safari treks. These treks are forty-five minutes loops through our gazelle pasture, out to the rhino paddocks and to the lands of Watusi beyond!

For the most dedicated, we encourage you to enjoy a morning with us at our Earth Day Extravaganza and then head to downtown Santa Rosa to take part in another amazing Earth Day event: the Global March for Science. Visit www.marchforscience.com for details on the march.

This year, make Earth Day something special with us at Safari West.

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That’s why we’re introducing the Simple Solutions Project. This campaign is simple. We know that you’re out there, leading by example, taking small steps each day to make the world a little better, and we want to thank you for it.

The staff of the Safari West Research, Education, and Conservation Department has been armed with a very special certificate; one which grants the recipient a completely free Behind-the-scenes experience here at Safari West. All you need to do to qualify for this certificate is what so many of you are doing already.

Keep bringing your reusable cup or thermos to the café. Keep riding your bike to work. Keep asking where your food came from or how it was made. In short, keep taking those small, simple, sustainable steps that lead toward an improved world. If one of our REC members catches you leading by example, we’ll present you, not just with a certificate, but with our thanks.

Simple steps can change the world, and leaders like you will light the way. Thank you.

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We’re now proud to introduce a whole new corner for conservation. One section of the gift gallery has been transformed with a focus on everyday conservation. The goal of this new development is to promote simple and effective conservation action. Taking steps to help the planet and its wild places don’t need to be complex and expensive; it can be as easy as going shopping. You’ll find a variety of amazing gifts in the Conservation Corner. You will find gifts that either support some of our conservation partners in their dedicated work or that encourage sustainable living here at home.

Included in the products on display in the Conservation Corner are great stocking-stuffers like bamboo travel silverware that tucks easily into a purse or backpack and cuts down on the usage of plastic utensils. There are also beautiful handmade gifts produced in association with some of our conservation partners. These artisan items are made by the people on the ground where our partners work. This means that your dollar goes directly to supporting Safari West sponsored programs while providing income and jobs to the indigenous people in those parts of the world.

This treasure trove of environmentally responsible and largely one-of-a-kind merchandise provides a unique opportunity for holiday shopping. Each item on the shelves has signage to indicate what organization your money is supporting and what their particular mission is. This holiday season; give a unique gift to the conservation hero in your life while promoting sustainability across the globe.

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We’ve got everything you could want in a Halloween celebration. There’s the Conservation Pumpkin patch where you can sponsor a pumpkin for our wild creatures. There’s something awesome about watching a rhinoceros smash a jack-o-lantern, or seeing the lemurs sneak up on a snack-filled gourd. With a small donation, you can make that happen and help support the work of the Vulture Conservation Foundation! You may not think of buzzards as birds that need some help, but they most certainly do and you could be a part of that.

We’ve also got the Safari West Trick-or-Treat Trail which passes through our Junior Keepers’ Mad Science Lab, past the Wall of Skulls, and through the Bone Garden where our Osteology Lab Scientists bring Dia de los Muertos and Safari West together in an amazing way. There are incredible things to see and delicious candy to collect. And when your feet feel a little tired, you’re welcome to kick back and relax on the Trick-or-Trek bus tour, a 45-minute cruise through a few of our habitats. Enjoy the sights of giraffes, rhinos, and antelope galore as you travel through their Safari West home.

But what about the costumes? Of course, you should come in costume! All we ask is that you skip those cheap plastic things you find in the store. They’re made of single-use plastic and are almost guaranteed to wind up in a landfill by Thanksgiving. Instead, show off your creativity. Come up with an awesome costume made with stuff you find around the house, or from recycled old costumes, or from anything else you can think of. Wow us with your imagination and ingenuity and you just may take home a prize!

Lastly, if you want to make a day of it, reserve dinner with us. After an afternoon of exploration and fun, sit down at the Savanna Café for a delicious African-inspired meal followed by a presentation by Corky Quirk of Nor-Cal Bats. Not only will she fascinate you with her stories of our local flying mammals, she’ll introduce you to a few live and in person.

Halloween and Dia de los Muertos are festivals to honor the dead and celebrate the living. Come to celebrate with us at Safari West and make your Halloween wild!

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On Saturday, October 29th, you’re cordially invited to come attend our Halloween Spook-tacular! Like any good Halloween bash, costumes are highly encouraged, but with the catch that we want to see your most conservation-minded creation. What does that mean? Well, we’re not big fans of the cheap, few-use manufactured costumes that fill the shelves of big-box stores this time of year. Convenient though those may be, they tend to wind up in landfills by the first week of November and are almost always made of plastics and other non-biodegradables. Stun us with a clever costume made of recycled materials (clothes, boxes, old costumes, etc) and you may go home with free passes for one of our Classic Safari Tours.

Since you’ll already be in costume, you and yours should also take a turn on our Trick-or-Treat Trail! Visit our Conservation Pumpkin Patch, the Junior Keepers’ Mad Science Lab, the Wall of Skulls, and the Bone Garden, collecting candy all the way. This trail is not only a source of sugary sweetness, it’s also an amazing tour through some skeletal specimens of Safari West animals assembled by our dedicated Osteology Team (scientists of the skeleton). The Conservation Pumpkin Patch is a great place to support pumpkin-enrichment for the animals in our collection while simultaneously supporting the Vulture Conservation Foundation and their important work with some notoriously unnerving birds.

Around these activities, we’ll also be running our Trick-or-Trek bus tours. These mini-tours take place on our Nairobi bus and depart every 45 minutes starting at 10 am. Climb aboard and head out to meet giraffes, rhinos, watusi cattle, and antelope galore!

If all of this hasn’t satisfied your Halloween cravings, top off the day with a dinner reservation at the Savannah Café! Not only will you have a delicious dinner in sight of our haunting herds, you’ll also be able to attend an after dinner presentation by Corky Quirk of NorCal bats. She’ll be talking about our local bats and bringing some of them to meet you face-to-face!

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What the average visitor may not see are the many researchers and dedicated scientists working diligently behind the scenes. Safari West is not only home to lemurs, flamingos, and giraffes. It’s also home to something we call the REC department. Standing for “Research, Education, & Conservation”, the hard working REC Department team-members have several interconnected but very different responsibilities.

Firstly, the REC Department is our research division. Tucked away in one corner of the property, we find the heart of this division, the Osteology Lab. Osteology is the study of bones; a useful field of exploration. A tremendous amount of information can be garnered from the study of bones. After all, how do you think we learned about dinosaurs? Beyond the study of skeletons, the osteology lab scientists also conduct extensive inquiries into animal behavior, reproductive physiology, and parasitology.

The animals of Safari West live out their entire lives here, often times from birth. While death is an unpleasant subject, especially the death of an animal we’ve been working alongside for years, it is nonetheless a reality that must be confronted. Zebras are no more immortal than we humans are after all. If a zebra passes away here on property, we are lucky in that we can glean something positive from the tragedy by studying the bones that remain. By conducting postmortem investigations, our team can learn about the life of the individual animal. This allows us to expand our knowledge of potential illnesses or traumas that may affect the species in our care. Furthermore, by studying the characteristics that make each individual bone unique, we benefit the fields of paleontology and archaeology. In these ways, the tragedy of an animal’s loss is in a small way brightened by the opportunity to further our understanding of that species.

The second letter of the REC department stands for education. Educating the public is of paramount importance to the REC department and its members. For example, while much of the Osteo lab’s work happens behind the scenes, October visitors to Safari West enjoy a unique opportunity to take a peek behind the curtain. As we celebrate Halloween and the Day of the Dead, the REC department brings out examples of their osteological specimens. These displays provide amazing demonstrations of the work the researchers do and it’s incredible value to the scientific world at large. In the Osteo lab’s Walking with the Dead exhibit, guests are invited to explore many of the skeletons in the collection. Likewise, in celebration of World Giraffe Day, the Osteo lab brings out their giraffe specific material. Examining the complete skeletal structure of an adult giraffe like the one you just saw on tour adds a completely unique level of understanding to the safari experience.

Lastly, we come to the conservation component of the REC Department. Conservation efforts touch nearly every aspect of daily life at Safari West. Conservation comes to play in the propagation of endangered species and the management of genetic diversity in our collection. It is also a factor influencing which conservation advocates and scientists we invite to present to our guests throughout the year. If you’ve been reading the newsletter, then you’ve likely seen the Conservation Corner articles we produce. They are also a part of our conservation outreach.

Daniel (Danny) Cusimano is the Director of the Research, Education, and Conservation Department. As you may imagine, he’s a pretty busy guy. He directs the operations of the osteology lab and is the driving force behind the many research projects happening on the property. Research interns and graduate students embarking on studies work closely with Danny as well.

Recently, Danny became involved with the Kesem Kebena Project; a paleontological salvage operation taking place in Ethiopia. The Kesem and the Kebena are two rivers in the process of being dammed. As a result of the damming, large areas of land will become inundated with water and any paleontological material in those areas will be lost. Thanks to the sponsorship of the Ethiopian Authority for Research and Conservation of Cultural Heritage (ARCCH), the Kesem Kebena project has been collecting and cataloging as much material as possible and moving it to the National Museum of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa. Rarely are these fossils complete skeletons or even complete bones. More frequently this material shows up as a chaotic collection of intermingled fragments. The project needed scientists adept at piecing together animal bones and thanks to his work as director of the Osteo lab, Danny fit the bill perfectly.

Safari West is sponsoring Danny’s work in Ethiopia. The Kesem Kebena Project represents a worthy undertaking and something Safari West is proud to support on principle. We do however have an interest beyond mere nobility. Several species from our collection originate in the area the project is studying. The fossils Danny and his cohorts are piecing together represent the ancestors of animals we interact with on a daily basis.

This project perfectly bridges the three primary responsibilities of the REC Department. By collecting and cataloging these fossils this research project adds valuable data to the library of human knowledge. The project also supplements our education component beautifully. The Safari West guide department prides itself on constantly refining our information and techniques so that visitors to our preserve get the most accurate and informative presentations possible. The new finds unearthed by the Kesem Kebena Project are already revealing novel data about the species in our collection and their evolutionary history.

Perhaps most exciting of all is the way in which this kind of paleontological work is beginning to influence the world of conservation. For a long time conservation has been focused largely on mitigating human factors. If we’re over hunting a species, the conservation message is to limit hunting pressures. If we are fragmenting a habitat either through deforestation, urbanization or some other means, the immediate conservation response is to establish protected areas.

These are all valid responses but they are fundamentally reactionary. We pursue a behavior until we recognize a consequence and then attempt to mitigate the behavior. Conservation is slowly turning proactive instead of reactive and a novel scientific approach is aiding in that transition. It’s been called conservation paleobiology and it’s the result of paleontologists like Danny taking an interest in the modern conservation situation. Human factors are undeniably critical to the current state of wildlife conservation but humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years. Up until the advent of civilization some 6,000 years ago, we couldn’t have had the kind of mass impact we do now and arguably even then we didn’t start to exert global pressure until after the industrial revolution.

What conservation paleobiology allows us to do is take the long view. We are increasingly able to look beyond the last few hundred years. The interplay of ecosystems is subtle and if you take bullets and freeways out of the equation, there are still innumerable factors related to the success or failure of a species. By sending Danny to Ethiopia, we are placing ourselves at the forefront of this branch of research.

Safari West is more than just a wildlife preserve. If our aim were simply to show you the animals that once roamed the wild, we’d be doing a disservice. Instead, our goal is to show you to the amazing creatures who continue to inhabit the wild today and hopefully, to inspire you to join our fight to keep it that way.

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