Member Spotlight: Diane Dotson of Clemson T4T Interns at Big Cat Rescue

For most college students, summer break is not all fun and games. Those three months before the beginning of a new academic year constitute a critical period for students to find work and complete internships that compliment their academic success. Finding an internship is difficult enough, but landing a position that is also fun and fulfilling is very difficult to do. Diane Dotson, Vice President of T4T at Clemson University, has managed to do just that.  

Diane is interning at Big Cat Rescue (BCR) in Tampa, Florida, for the summer and loving every minute of it. BCR is one of the largest accredited sanctuaries in the world dedicated to rescuing and rehabilitating big cats. While home to many tigers, big cat rescue also houses lions, servals, bobcats, and several other species of wild felines.

I had a chance to talk with Diane about her internship, and it was clear that she is enjoying her summer experience.

Diane Dotson taking a selfie at BCR

What made you want to commit your last summer to helping the animals at Big Cat Rescue?

As I progressed through my college career at Clemson I become involved in T4T, and studied conservation in Costa Rica. I wanted to pursue my passion in conservation. After interning with T4T last summer, I decided that I wanted to gain more experience with an organization that values the same issues with captivity as I do. Big Cat Rescue is the gold standard for sanctuaries for big cats and after following them closely on social media, reading information on their website, and visiting the sanctuary, I knew that I wanted to intern for them. There is no amount of money that could convince me to choose a different path than the one I’m on. I want to make a difference for big cats and I knew I’d learn exactly how to do that while interning at BCR this summer.

Is working as a keeper at a rescue something you’d want to pursue more?

 

There’s nothing more rewarding than walking home after a long day of work and

having the cats chuff, “moo”, purr, or just rub up against the enclosure almost as if they are thanking you for all your hard work that day. I love that I get to make a difference for the cats. As I spend more time with people that truly care about animals, I realize that I can make a huge difference through policy, education, and outreach. I love giving tours and spreading the word about issues facing big cats and informing people how they can make a difference even in the smallest ways. Ideally I will have a job one day where I can fight for animals publicly, as well as conduct on the ground work.

What do you hope to get out of this experience, and what have you gotten out of it so far?

I definitely wanted to learn more about captivity of big cats from a keeper’s perspective. Now I’m able to make my own opinions as I observe them everyday. Because of my experiences so far, my beliefs have been strengthened. For instance, when I see Bengali, a male tiger that was in the circus, my heart just breaks for all the hardships he had to endure before he was rescued. Or Amanda, a female tiger, whose damage from her and her brothers’ time exploited in the cub petting industry is quite obvious by their lack of trust of humans. We need to do more to prevent these rescued cats from needing to be rescued in the first place.

What are your responsibilities as an intern with Big Cat Rescue?

We wake up around 7:00, have breakfast, and walk through the 67-acre sanctuary to start our work. Then we prep the food and ensure that all of the animals are fed. However, as a level 1 intern we cannot actually feed the big guys. We clean our enclosures everyday, and then we have lunch for 30 minutes and head out to a project. Today we took down an old enclosure in order to build our small cat (bobcats, lynxes, caracals, servals, and hybrids) vacation rotation enclosure. Our vacation enclosure is a 2.5 acre area that the cats rotate through for enrichment purposes.

Diane (far left) and other interns

How will the internship contribute toward your career goals?

I have become a better advocate for big cats. I’ve had the opportunity to form my own opinions and learn what really matters to me. It’s awesome that I get to volunteer at Big Cat Rescue and work with great people who fight for the ethical treatment of big cats and continue to be encouraged to do all that I can. We have the utmost respect for our cats.

It’s really cool that all these things that I’ve been interested in, and have dreamt about my entire life, are all incorporated here at BCR. Often we will be walking home and one of the cats will walk the length of its enclosure with us and one of my fellow interns will point out that this is truly amazing that we are four feet away from an adult tiger. As a child, I have never guessed that I would be spending 12 hours a day alongside tigers, lions, leopards, etc. at just 20 years old. We often take our incredible opportunity for granted, and I can’t imagine spending my summer any other way.

What has been the most exciting thing you’ve been a part of so far at your internship?

This question is really hard! I have so many things that were fun for different reasons. I really enjoy watching my fellow interns “light up” when their favorite cat responds to their poor attempts at chuffing with a “hearty cuff,” or when I get to pull the cart to feed Outback (there are only lions and tigers out there); it’s really astonishing. We have three tigers from a Texas rescue named Andre, Arthur, and Amanda, and they are crazy wild. They’re very aggressive during feeding and we have to split their individual diets. When they get fed they charge the cage, growl and roar at you. It’s quite scary, but really cool at the same time! They definitely remind you that you can take a cat out of the wild (or raise them in captivity) but you still can’t take the wild out of the cat.

Five interns, myself included, went on a “bobcat rescue” after a wild bobcat was reported to be injured by a car. We went out to try and find it with big nets, lots of bug spray, and BCR’s founder, Carole Baskin. It was a really different experience. We found signs that the bobcat had been there but we could not find it.

Ooh and I also got to help move Jade and Armani, which are two female, sister leopards. They are incredibly gorgeous! They were actually really calm, surprisingly enough, and it was cool to be able to see them up close and really appreciate their wildness. They are definitely enjoying their time in leopard vacation rotation, especially as they have been taking turns showing off for the neighbor leopard.

Big Cat Rescue is located in Tampa, Florida, and offers tours seven days a week. To find out more about Big Cat Rescue’s work, you can visit their website here.

Thank you Diane Dotson for your help on this piece. Go tigers!

Best,

Taylor Tench

National T4T Coalition Policy Intern

ttench@g.clemson.edu

#WhereRtheTigers

At the National Tigers for Tigers Coalition office, we dream of forests, swamps and tundra where wild tigers are free to roam without fear of falling victim to the violent greed of poachers. We dream of a world as it once was, where less than a century ago, more than 100,000 wild tigers prowled across Asia. Unfortunately, so long as tiger parts remain profitable on the black market, this is a dream that will never again be realized.

Today, less than 3,200 tigers are estimated to remain in the wild. It’s a number that signals a grim reality for the species – and one that leads us to ask #WhereAreTheTigers?

The last remaining wild tigers are spread out across only 7% of their former territory. Large-scale farmers, timber industry workers and developers continue to ravage native tiger habitats in Asia at a breakneck pace, and as a result, most of these tigers are unable to find enough food to feed themselves or their cubs. The World Wildlife Fund estimates that the world’s forests are lost “at a rate of as many as 36 football fields every minute.” 

A tiger pugmark

But even the wild tigers that can manage to sustain themselves face a far more severe threat – their skin, bones, teeth, claws and whiskers are all highly-prized on the black market, and despite international efforts at regulation, poachers can fetch as much as $50,000 from the parts of a single tiger. And with each successful sale, demand for these parts only grows.

The crisis is by no means beyond our reach as Americans. Sporting one of the largest captive tiger populations in the world, with most outside of zoos and dedicated research facilities, the United States is surprisingly lax when it comes to regulating tigers as pets. In many states, buying a tiger from a breeder is easier than adopting a dog from a shelter, and some don’t even require those who buy tigers to notify local authorities or neighbors! For the estimated 5,000 tigers forced into private ownership, a lack of attention by the US government often means a life of insufficient care, or even death on the black market.

A worse fate still for these captive tigers can be found across Asia, in commercial “tiger farms” that are still allowed to operate legally by the Chinese and other governments. Despite a 1993 ban on the trade and use of tiger parts in China and an international ban on the tiger trade in 1987, there is a growing demand for tiger parts and derived products among Chinese elite as a status of wealth and influence. In the past decade alone, the World Wildlife Fund reports that over 1,000 tigers, many from such tiger farms, have been killed solely to meet the consistently high demand of Asian consumers.

Blood of the Tiger by J.A. Mills

Renowned tiger expert J.A. Mills describes in her recent book TheBlood of the Tiger, an estimated 6,000 tigers are bred for their parts like cattle on such farms, and hesitation to confront the Chinese government for these atrocities allows them to operate without interference. 

So, #WhereRtheTigers? They are forced into the shadows to escape poachers, exiled from their historical range. They are being sold off in small parts through illegal markets the world over. They are languishing in our own backyards, longing for support. They are hidden away on tiger farms, where they are treated as a commodity. They are dying by the thousands, and if nothing changes, they soon won’t be anywhere at all.

Today, the Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, concluded a trip to Vietnam where she met with government officials to discuss how the US government and the Vietnamese government can work together to put an end to the illegal wildlife trade. Her next stop is China, where she will have similar discussions with top officials of the country that ranks #1 in the world for the illegal wildlife trade.

We have a dream of helping tigers, and we know you do too. But if we are to progress, we need to raise awareness, pressure governments and the international community to regulate the treatment of tigers, and show poachers, wildlife traffickers and tiger farm operators that their business will not be tolerated. Please join us in spreading our #WhereRtheTigers campaign on your favorite social media outlet, and stay with us for continuing updates on our cause.

Stay tuned for our upcoming Global Tiger Day campaign on July 29^th, 2015 and ask yourself: #WhereRtheTigers?

Go Tigers!

National T4T Coalition Staff

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A special thanks to Justin Jacques, Communications Intern from the National Wildlife Refuge Association for crafting this piece.

Meet the Intern: Sierra Hoisington

The National Tigers for Tigers Coalition has recently partnered with  the Refuge Association to provide special internship opportunities for Tigers for Tigers members on various refuges throughout the country.

Sierra Hoisington, a Wildlife Biology major at Clemson University, is interning this summer at Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge in Georgia. Sierra is a rising Junior and has been involved with Tigers for Tigers for two years. I sat down for a quick Q&A with Sierra about her internship and time at Okefenokee.

C: What have you done so far/what are your duties as an intern?

S: For the month of June, I am working in Visitor Services due to the large amount of people who visit the swamp in this month (in July, I will be switching to the Biology and Forestry Departments.) Duties associated with this part of my internship include educational outreach, maintenance of the Visitor's Center & the Environmental Education classroom, taking part in the planning & implementation of our Junior Refuge Ranger Summer Camp, teaching educational programs, and the general tasks that come up on a day-to-day basis. 

Sierra pictured fourth from the left with fellow Okefenokee interns/volunteers.

So far I've participated in multiple environmental education programs in which we travel to libraries up to an hour and a half away. There, we put on our "Oke Friends Swamp Theater" Puppet Show in which the children in attendance get to learn about the importance and threats to swamp animals such as owls, alligators, and frogs. With these programs, I either get to help out preforming the puppet show, help with the program, or I get to be one of our several mascots that the children love to get their picture with. I've also helped with our annual Children's Fishing Derby at our sister refuge, Banks Lake. That was a lot of fun because there were so many activities for the kids to learn about appreciating nature and see the swamp in a whole other light. Recently though, my main duties have been focused on the execution of our Junior Refuge Ranger Summer Camp. A lot hours has gone into planning this two week event - and our first day was today and it was a total success! (6/17/15) Some of the activities that the kids get to participate in are a Okefenokee Swamp boat tour, fishing, "Be a Wildlife Biologist", a boardwalk hike, and many many more fun things. My duties surrounding this event included every aspect of the more administrative duties to right down with being with the children at all times. 

I also had a day last week where I was able to go out with Georgia DNR and help and watch them complete some of the Gopher Tortoise studies. In the field, we completed line transects in the thick brush to look for these tortoise's burrows. Once we would find a burrow, the process of finding out if a tortoise was "home" commenced. We would then feed a camera scope down into the burrow (which can be up to 40 ft long and 10 ft deep) and see if you could spot a tortoise within the burrow. It was a very cool experience, and I'm very glad I could participate. 

Sierra as an owl as part of a library program focused on swamp education

 

C: Have you been to a refuge before your internship?

S: No, I have never been on a refuge prior to this internship. But now that I've seen what they can include, I'm determined to visit a bunch more!

C: What were you expecting out of your internship?

S: I was expecting a well-rounded view of what takes place on a National Wildlife Refuge. I had always heard about US Fish & Wildlife, but had never really gotten to fully see first-hand what the organization does. And honestly, after only being in this internship for about two weeks - I can say that I definitely want to work for US Fish & Wildlife at some point in my career. 

Sierra assists with the puppet show

C: What's one thing you've learned so far?

S: One thing I've learned so far is the extreme importance of education and outreach. These younger kids are our future. And if we want our wilderness to stay wild and protected, we need to educate the importance of appreciation of our wildlife and habitats to younger generations. They love to learn about animals and the environment, and it's a great joy to see their faces when they learn something new. 

C: What's it like interning on a refuge?

S: Interning on a refuge is a lot of fun! You start off the day with driving a government vehicle into work on one of the most historic swamps in the world and life can't get much better than that. Your view of the swamp lets you see American Alligators every time you look out to that water. Preparation for programs is the day to day work and the fact that you are surrounded by an awesome staff makes every day fun and different. 

C: Would you recommend the internship to other students?

S: Oh my goodness, yes! Again, I've only been on the refuge for a short amount of time but I love it and never want to leave. 

C: What's been your favorite moment/day so far?

S: My favorite day thus far was today, our first day of summer camp. The kids just had such a great time all day, but my favorite part was when we all took a boat tour on the swamp together. The kids would get so excited at every gator we saw (and we probably saw around 40-50 on our 1 hour boat ride) We got to show the kids a pair of Barred Owls perched on a Cypress tree on the edge of the canal, egrets, Great Blue Herons, and even a what we believe was a Spoonbill. Giving kids that appreciation of the swamp is something that is super invaluable and something I'll cherish for a long time. 

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Okefenokee has been nominated as one of the top 10 camping sites in the US by USA Today, and it is the only national wildlife refuge to be nominated! Please cast your vote for Okefenokee by clicking the following link www.10best.com/awards/travel/best-scenic-campground.

Go Tigers!

Carrah Lingo

Communications Associate

NT4TC

Meet the Intern: Taylor Tench

The National Tigers for Tigers Coalition is proud to announce that we have our first official intern at the offices in Washington, D.C.! Taylor Tench will be a Policy Intern this summer for Tigers for Tigers tackling wildlife trafficking issues, planning for our first ever leadership conference, and aiding in communication with all of our T4T students across the country. Let's just say this intern won't be fetching morning coffee!

A 2015 Clemson graduate, Taylor is getting real life experience right out of college in the conservation world. Saving our mascot from extinction is vital, but so is offering our students amazing opportunities to learn, network, and get jobs that they are passionate about. I sat down with Taylor last week to learn more about his experience with T4T, and what he hopes to get out of it!

Taylor with his T4T gear in the D.C. office!

C: How did you get involved with Tigers for Tigers?

T: I became involved with Tigers for Tigers my freshman year at Clemson University. I had always been interested in endangered species conservation and once I discovered an organization on campus dedicated to saving our mascot I was immediately hooked.

C: What have you learned through your involvement with T4T?

T: T4T taught me so much throughout my college career, not only about tigers but also about the field of conservation, teamwork, leadership, and the value of hard work. Before my involvement in T4T I had a very narrow view of conservation in that I assumed “conservation” was limited to going out to some exotic location, studying an animal, and somehow that was all it took to make a difference. I have learned that it takes collaboration from all different disciplines (science, policy, law, communications, education, etc) to enact successful conservation efforts. Through my time as a T4T member at Clemson I transitioned from an ordinary member, to an officer in the organization, to President my senior year. My experiences in T4T at Clemson showed me just how important teamwork is to accomplish your goals. It takes hard work from a team of like-minded individuals to achieve difficult objectives, and thankfully T4T is full of members across the country ready to do what it takes to save our mascot! Even now as an intern I continue to learn each day, and that is what keeps me so interested in and excited about the work this organization is undertaking.

 Taylor volunteers at Clemson's organization fair "Tiger Prowl" in 2013

C: What kinds of things are you taking on this summer for your internship with NT4TC?

T: I’m taking on any and every task the Coalition needs me to do to this summer. So far I’ve been helping out with planning for Global Tiger Day, writing letters, attending hearings on newly introduced legislation, corresponding with students and faculty coming up to DC next week, and am working on putting together information for some new Coalition publications. Soon I’ll begin putting together content for the Coalition’s fall leadership conference. So needless to say, I have plenty to keep me busy!

Taylor speaks at the 2013 5K he organized

C: What do you hope to get out of your internship?

T: I want to contribute as much as I can to help the Coalition grow and succeed. I’ve been a part of the Coalition ever since its inception and believe this organization is on its way to be a huge player in the world of tiger conservation. Additionally I’m hoping to learn as much as I can about the policy side of conservation and understand how things get accomplished here in our nation’s capitol. 

C: You’re from Florida, went to college at Clemson and are now in D.C. How are you enjoying it?

T: I love it! It’s very different from what I’m used to, but I think that’s what makes it so exciting.

C: What advice would you give to other T4T members?

T: Stay open-minded and don’t lose sight of your goals. Take chances and expose yourself to different fields and experiences outside of your main interest. As long as you continue to work hard and seize every opportunity handed to you, you will succeed.

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Taylor is currently helping lead T4T leaders on a three day trip in D.C. to talk to senators about wildlife trafficking. Stay tuned for a blog this Friday all about their accomplishments!

Go Tigers!

Carrah Lingo

Communications Associate

NT4TC