Houston Zoo Wildlife Warrior Lady Márquez is Headed to Town!
This weekend, the Zoo is welcoming another special guest who is visiting us from the Galapagos Islands! Lady Márquez is here from our partners at Ecology Project International (EPI) after being chosen by the Houston Zoo admissions team as a 2017 Wildlife Warrior Award recipient. This award recognizes exceptional individuals from our wildlife conservation partner programs and provides wildlife warriors with an experience that will increase their abilities/knowledge.
“We were most impressed with the fact that Lady is dedicating her life to empowering the next generation of conservation leaders in Galapagos!” – Houston Zoo Staff
Born and raised in the Galapagos Islands, Lady is an EPI alumni, and now acts as their Outreach Program Coordinator. In this role, she works to empower local teens to be future conservation leaders. Driven by her passion to inspire others to save wildlife, Lady helped to create an ecology club which brings together more than 20 local teens on a weekly basis to participate in various conservation activities like: wildlife documentary screenings, beach clean ups, bird mortality awareness campaigns, ecological monitoring, and many other citizen science based programs.
One of these efforts, centered around the protection of green sea turtles, resulted in 22 students receiving training in monitoring protocols, while another 40 students helped to collect data and protect nesting sites. In 2016, this project led to the protection of 53 green sea turtle nests, and documented sightings of 1,940 hatchlings! In collaboration with the Galapagos National Park and Charles Darwin Foundation, the eco club was also successful in creating awareness on nest protection among visitors to a public beach that also acts as a nesting ground for the turtle species.
Lady has used her Wildlife Warrior Award to attend a week-long training focused on enhancing conservation efforts at the community level. This opportunity has allowed her to explore different teaching methods and begin designing her own strategies for empowering her students to address threats to wildlife and take action to save species! Now that her training is complete, Lady will spend several days in Houston working with our conservation education team exchanging ideas and learning more about how our programs like Zoo Crew and Camp Zoofari inspire the next generation of Houstonians to become wildlife saving heroes.
