Ear to the Ground
Voices behind the Orion Grassroots Network
LELA LARNED is director of Cape Cod’s
Wild Care, Inc.( wildcarecapecod.org), a wildlife hospital with two full-time staff, seventy
volunteers, and several interns. Twenty years
old, Wild Care operates on a $180,000 budget.
What’s changed in my organization’s
work over time: The urgency and maturity
with which people relate to the environmental crisis, and their ownership of it.
The worst thing I have to do: Tell a
rescuer that a wild creature they were
kind enough to stop and try to help cannot
be saved.
The best thing I get to do: See a bird
?y free and strong again, against all odds,
back into the wild.
What delights me in my daily work:
Watching people innocently discover the
sentience and beauty of wild creatures;
no matter their age, they become children again.
The worst meeting I ever had: Minus
my hard hat, with a protective mother red-tailed hawk.
One tool or resource that makes my
job easier: Safety goggles and welding
gloves!
The principle I wish I could live by:
Great faith, great love, great e=ort.
How our staff express their
creativity: Building mini-habi-tats with hollowed trees, rotting logs, native plants, and
insects so that our patients
might have a bit less stress
during their recovery.
Where I find hope: The
incredible will of all wild creatures to survive and heal, if only
given the chance.
The best thing anyone ever
taught me: To run in the rain,
play in the snow, charge into the wind, and
swim in the seas.
One thing I learned working here
that surprised me: People are sometimes
embarrassed by their instinct of compassion or empathy. They need a bit of
encouragement and reinforcement.
Totem animal, vegetable, or mineral:
Horseshoe crab.
Most influential book: The Monkey
Wrench Gang, by Edward Abbey.
One political shift that would make
a big difference for my organization:
Conservation begins in our backyards.
Whales and tigers and rainforests matter
too, but we need to begin in our own
space, with creatures we share the world
with on a daily basis.
SKOT LATONA is supervisor of park interpretation at metropolitan Denver’s nine-hundred-acre South Platte Park ( sspr.org/nature). The
park’s nature center has been running for sixteen years with five full-time staff and fifteen
seasonal staff on a $250,000 budget. It’s committed to “helping our community find meaning and value in natural open space through
direct, positive experiences with the South
Platte River.”
The worst thing I have to do: Take
abuse from occasional visitors whose fear
of nature or anger at how it works is
greater than their willingness to try to
understand or live with it.
My organization’s biggest success:
Preserving this park to begin with.
Visionary city leaders chose to take a creative idea for a ?oodplain park to
Congress and >ght the operating procedures of the Corps of Engineers.
The principle I wish I could live by:
Patience.
How our staff blows off steam:
Tossing our inner tubes in the river after a
hot day and ?oating down to the local
riverside bar-and-grill works well.
Where I find hope: In the school
groups that attend year after year. While
their familiarity with nature may seem
PHOTOGRAPHS l LELA LARNED BY JULIE O’NEIL; SKOT LATONA BY PHILIP WALTZ; BETONY JONES BY DAPHNE HOUGARD
