With help from a Conservation Champions grant, Como horticulturists are calling attention to one of Minnesota’s most valuable and vulnerable ecosystems.

With its glossy leaves and deep red and purple coloring, the pitcher plant is one of Minnesota’s most captivating natives. So captivating, in fact, that when insects are drawn into its invitingly vase-like body, they soon discover there’s no way out. Tiny, down-drafting hairs inside the plant make it impossible for prey to find purchase before being drowned and digested by this carnivorous plant. 

Native to Minnesota’s peatlands, pitcher plants are just one of the fascinating featured players in a trio of “mini bogs” floating this season in the Marjorie McNeely Conservatory’s Water Gardens. Created by Como horticulturists Bo Akinkuotu and Victoria Housewright, these miniature peatlands—and new interpretive signage nearby—are part of a larger Como Friends’ Conservation Champions project designed to call attention to the beauty, diversity, and environmental benefits of the region’s expansive bogs. 

A Growing Partnership

One of the best places to see this unique ecosystem is in northern Minnesota’s Sax-Zim Bog, a three-hundred square mile peatland about an hour’s drive northwest of Duluth. Well known to birders who flock there to see northern owls, warblers, finches, and other boreal birds, the bog is just as impressive for its diverse plant life, which includes more than 750 species of wildflowers and terrestrial plants, trees, shrubs, grasses, mosses, and ferns.

“Bogs are having a moment and this is definitely one to see, so we came up with the idea of building a partnership with the Friends of the Sax-Zim Bog, a support organization like Como Friends,” says Housewright. Together, Housewright and Akinkuotu wrote a Conservation Champions request proposing a donation to help the organization buy additional land to conserve, as well as the opportunity to bring home a sampling of the bog’s most interesting plants to expand Como’s educational collections. “We wanted it to be a partnership. They’re the ones with the expertise and resources to protect and preserve the bog,” she says, “and here at Como we have nearly two million annual visitors that we can help get excited not just about this incredible ecosystem, but also about why conserving bogs matters so much for climate change.”

All Sax-Zim Bog photographs taken by Naturalist Kelly Beaster

Wild Collecting for Como

In June, the pair traveled north to work with a naturalist at Sax-Zim Bog who helped them to identify and wild collect some of the peatland’s most notable species, like pitcher plants and sundews, leatherleaf and bog bean, pink lady’s slippers and heart-leaved twayblade. To minimize impact on other plants, the pair took only tiny samples and cuttings. “You can’t really dig in an environment as soggy as that—instead you’re just gently untangling roots from one plant to the next,” Akinkuotu explains.

The team took home nearly 60 individual plants that are now taking root behind the scenes in Como’s 30,000-square-foot greenhouse. Once established, Akinkuotu says he’s looking forward to incorporating more of these bog beauties beyond the Water Garden, where the “mini bogs” have already been a big hit with visitors—and with volunteer ducks who’ve been caught nestling in the moss, grasses, and pitcher plants. 

“Even at this scale, you can see these mini bogs creating their own little biomes. We come out here to care for them every day and discover new spiders that have started webbing, more and more bugs that are attracted to these plants, and little tadpoles and frogs that will actually move in,” he says. “By bringing a little more attention to the Sax-Zim Bog, we want people to see how special these places are—and to know that conservation isn’t just something that happens far away. It’s right here at home.”

Bog plants in order of appearance: bog bean, bog rosemary, pitcher plant, bog laurel, star flower, Labrador tea, sundew, lantern sedge, cotton grass

While Como Zoo’s Nicky and Cerberus are easy to spot, wild wolves can be elusive during the summer months. Not only does heavy summer foliage make them harder to see, but wolves are most active at dawn and dusk, saving their energy when the sun is at its peak.

If you’ve been camping in the north woods this summer, chances are good you’ve heard the eerie call of the gray wolf echoing in the distance. But it’s rare to actually see a wolf during the summer months—a fact that’s left gaps in our understanding of wolf behavior and ecology. 

So what exactly do wolves do during the summer?

That’s the question driving the researchers with the Voyageurs Wolf Project, a University of Minnesota initiative aimed at creating a deeper understanding of the summer ecology of wolves in northern Minnesota’s Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem. Voyageurs Wolf Project is a research organization whose work contributes to wolf conservation. It’s a topic that’s also fascinated Tieran Rosefield, a former Como Zoo attendant turned temporary hoofstock keeper, who just earned a Conservation Champions grant from Como Friends to help support this nonprofit initiative.

As part of her pitch to Como Friends’ selective microgrant program, Rosefield suggested a contribution to support the Voyageurs Wolf Project’s nonprofit operations, combined with new interpretive signage at Como Zoo’s wolf habitat to teach visitors more about why wolf conservation matters. Though wolves sometimes get a bad rap, from fairytales to farmers concerned about predation, recent findings from the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park and other habitats show that wolves help many other species thrive, from boosting beaver populations, to protecting trees from over-browsing. 

Raising public awareness about wolves and other conservation stories is also part of Como’s growing commitment to empathy-focused education, a campus-wide strategy aimed at deepening connections between Como’s visitors and animal ambassadors. Through Como’s growing partnership with Advancing Conservation through Empathy (ACE) for Wildlife, a nationwide learning network, Como’s education programs and interpretive signage are being updated to reflect the growing body of research that shows that fostering empathy with animals and plants is a powerful tool in building life-long conservation behaviors. Como Friends’ funding, as well as special projects like Conservation Champions, has helped to drive the initiative, which will continue this year with updated signage for polar bears and other animals.

To cap off her Conservation Champions project, Rosefield also created a new keeper talk to highlight what’s happening with Como Zoo’s animal ambassadors, Nicky and Cerberus, and to share new findings from the Voyageurs Wolf Project and other wolf conservation efforts. “I feel like wolves are a little underappreciated, and so I wanted to call attention to this really important species,” she says. “Wolves are highly contended all over the world, and that is why I wanted to bring attention to this incredible species. I also wanted to bring attention to the work done by the Voyageurs Wolf Project, because their research can provide the framework for our care here at Como as well as conservation efforts in Minnesota. I would love to see what else they can do with a little help from Como.”  

Como Zoo’s life support specialist EJ Smith traveled to the Caribbean to support a promising project to rebuild the vanishing coral reefs

Vivid with color and teeming with life, coral reefs are among the most amazing ecosystems on the planet, accounting for just one percent of the ocean floor’s surface, yet supporting nearly a quarter of all marine species. 

But with growing greenhouse gas emissions, rising sea temperatures, ocean acidification, and a host of other factors, reefs around the world are in danger of dying out. While more than half of the world’s living coral has been lost since 1950, scientists predict more than 90 percent could disappear by 2050. 

While the challenges are daunting, Como Zoo life support specialist EJ Smith recently found some cause for hope in the Caribbean where a new conservation group called the Elkhorn Marine Conservancy is working on a solution. With the help of a Como Friends Conservation Champions grant, Smith spent three weeks at the EMC’s sites in Antigua and Barbuda helping the small nonprofit with a promising approach to reef restoration. 

“To help these reefs rebound, they’re working to create coral nurseries,” Smith explains. “They’ll look for healthy, [stress resistant] coral colonies out on the reefs, and take small chunks of them back to the nursery where they’re broken into micro fragments. Corals grow at an incredibly slow pace, but these micro fragments are found to grow faster in small colonies, speeding up that process of coral growth.” Corals are cultivated on ropes and coral “trees” made of PVC piping that can then be replanted onto degraded reefs. EMC’s nurseries are currently fostering 14 species of reef-building corals, many of which are critically endangered. 

An expert diver, Smith is responsible for all of Como’s aquatic habitats, ensuring water quality for dozens of species, from polar bears to pacus, and regularly diving into Como Zoo’s aquatic habitats to troubleshoot. “I once did the math and figured that professionally and recreationally, I’ve spent about two months of my life submerged in the water,” he says. “But diving with [EMC’s staff] was like working with superheroes. Some of these folks had such amazing physical capabilities they could hold their breath for minutes at a time. It was just astounding.” 

The water chemistry skills Smith has honed at Como Zoo are valuable to EMC’s work, and their plans to expand their coral nursery operations. To deepen the connections between conservation efforts in the Caribbean and at Como Zoo, Smith’s colleague Asher Berg, Como Zoo’s Aquatics Keeper, will be taking a Conservation Champions trip of his own this fall to support the renewal of coral near Antigua’s Green Island, York Island, and Cades Reef.

With a new tank of coral beds coming soon to the Aquatics Building, Smith says he’s looking forward to sharing his insights about coral conservation in upcoming keeper talks. While the health of the world’s coral hangs in the balance, Smith says he finds hope in the visit he made to Antigua’s St. Andrew’s School, where he talked with elementary school students about his work in life support, and how coral restoration can benefit the local economy, food chain, and climate resilience. 

“This next generation of island people are already tied to conservation, because their lives really are impacted by the health of the reefs,” he says. “To hear these kids talk about how they want to work in conservation, or maintaining fish stocks, or protecting the reefs when they grow up was really heartwarming, to be honest. It makes you hopeful that conservation projects like this are making an impact.”  

Conservation Champion Andrea Persson traveled to Sausalito’s Marine Mammal Center to learn the secrets of seal and sea lion care

If you’ve been to a Blaze Sparky Show at Como Zoo, you know that sea lions like Sparky are capable of some amazing feats, from diving nearly 60 stories below the ocean’s surface, to holding their breath for up to 20 minutes at a time. 

But some of the adaptations that work swimmingly in the sea can make veterinary care very complicated for seals and sea lions, particularly when it comes to anesthesia and  other medical interventions. “They’re so trainable and willing to participate in their own health care that you can accomplish quite a lot when they’re awake,” says Como Zoo veterinary technician Andrea Persson. “But it can be much trickier when they’re sick and need to be immobilized, in part because of the dive response that allows them to conserve oxygen and also because we just don’t have to do it very often.”

That’s why Persson recently traveled to Sausalito, California, to attend an intensive veterinary training program at the Marine Mammal Center, the largest marine mammal teaching hospital in the country. Made possible by a grant from Como Friends’ Conservation Champions program, the five-day program allowed Persson to support the Center’s work, rehabilitating stranded seals and sea lions, while learning veterinary tips and tricks from experts who provide daily care to more than 80 elephant seals, harbor seals, and sea lions.

Drawing blood from a seal requires making a puncture near the animal’s spine. “One of my main objectives was to become proficient in blood collection. Blood samples are very important in providing information on the health of the animals we care for and with our relatively small population of seals at the zoo I had limited opportunities to refine my venipuncture techniques. It was great to be able to collect blood on multiple animals each day while I was at the MMC and I am now very confident in my ability to collect blood from our animals at the zoo.” 

Since 1975, the Marine Mammal Center has rescued more than 26,000 marine animals along 600 miles of California coastline and in Hawai’i, typically answering more than 10,000 distress calls about sick, injured, or entangled marine mammals every year. During Persson’s stay in April, the Center was providing safe harbor to dozens of orphaned elephant seal pups, which are born at about 75 pounds and weigh nearly 300 pounds just a month later when they’re fully weaned from their mothers. In spite of their impressive size, young seals can often be separated prematurely when strong storms wash them off of beaches before they’ve learned how to survive on their own. Climate change makes the problem worse, as rising sea level and storm surges are more likely to sweep mothers and pups away from each other. 

Distressed elephant seal pups are routinely rehabilitated at the Marine Mammal Center, but before they can be returned to the ocean, they need to be taught how to eat an adult diet of fish, squid, krill, and algae. “But you have to do it in such a way that you’re not habituating them to people,” says Persson. “It’s very difficult to get them to eat, because if they get even a little bit of water in their mouth with the fish they don’t know what to do, and they start gagging.” 

The time Persson spent with pinniped pups may soon come in handy thanks to a new breeding recommendation for Como Zoo’s Atlantic gray seals, Wally and Medusa. And getting the chance to see wild harbor seals and sea lions on the California coast gave her even more appreciation for the species. “I would say the whole experience was invaluable, and gave me so many ideas to bring back to Como Zoo to improve care for our animals,” says Persson. “I’m very grateful.”

As studbook keeper for polar bears, Allison Jungheim preserves the health and genetics of North America’s most majestic species

When she shares observations about the polar bears in her care, Senior Keeper Allison Jungheim can sound like she’s talking about her closest friends, bubbling about Nan’s bossy behavior, bragging about Kulu’s impressive weight gain (“At 940 pounds, we should probably stop calling him little Kulu”), and beaming at Neil, the mild-mannered male who first came to Como Zoo with his brother Buzz back in 2001. “He is my bear,” she says. 

Jungheim brings the same enthusiasm to her role as studbook keeper for North America’s polar bears, responsible for tracking the genetic health and history of some 60 individuals living in partner zoos across Canada and the U.S. A project of the Bear Taxon Advisory Group through the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the studbook is one of the ways that zoos work together to ensure that managed populations of polar bears are living their best lives. 

Similar to your family’s own electronic medical records that allow for more coordinated health care, “keeping all of that data in one place is super important for the longevity of animals,” Jungheim says. “The studbook also gives me the ability to look back at historic animals and current animals, to see who’s related to whom, and who should breed with whom.” 

While Como Zoo’s keepers have earned national recognition for their success at reducing polar bear repetitive behaviors and developing tools for improving polar bear blood draws, Jungheim’s longtime leadership in polar bear preservation is a volunteer effort. “I don’t get any extra money or funding for managing the polar bear studbook, but it’s worth it to be part of the bigger picture, helping polar bears around the country, and not just here at Como.”

Polar bears require just the right conditions for successful breeding, both in zoos and in the wild. While polar bears will typically mate in early spring, they’re one of more than 130 animal species with delayed implantation, meaning that fertilized eggs don’t implant in the uterus until months later. The delay allows females to build up the fat reserves they’ll need to support themselves and their cubs during a long denning period. “But if the female doesn’t gain enough weight, or have good enough body condition, she may not implant that embryo or embryos at all,” explains Jungheim. The long dormancy period means that if one breeding pair is unsuccessful, zoos don’t have much time to establish a new pairing. 

“That’s one reason why collaboration with other zoos is so important,” she says, noting that the polar bear community of keepers, managers, and veterinary staff have regular virtual meetings throughout the year, sharing breeding and denning news, and exploring new strategies. “One of the things we’re trying is to create more choice for mates by pairing more than just one male and one female,” she says. “Our thought is that by giving mate choice, it gives the male the chance to share the love with other females, and increases competition for breeding, and hopefully, increases success rates.” 

With that strategy in mind, Como Zoo is getting ready to welcome a new female bear from a partner zoo, who might make a good breeding partner for Kulu. “With an aging population of bears, we’re trying to shake things up,” Jungheim says. If the pairing works, she may even have a couple of new names to add to the polar bear studbook.

Funding from Como Friends enabled Allison Jungheim to travel to attend an in-person polar bear conference, strengthening the network of connections zoos rely on to help bears live their best lives.

Two Como educators traveled to the Galapagos Islands to bring home new lessons for Como’s conservation curriculum

Since 2017, Como Friends’ Conservation Champions program has helped dozens of Como staff members pursue professional passion projects, from tracking snow leopards in Kyrgyzstan, to finding cool ways to cut down on single-use plastics on Como’s campus, to rehabilitating injured penguins on the coast of South Africa. 

While the Conservation Champions program is open to applications from everyone on Como’s campus, it wasn’t until Anne Ahiers and Ashley Verdeck got a nudge from the Education & Conservation Curator, Bekah Hanes, that the pair of education specialists decided it was time to make a pitch of their own. Their plan? To join a special program dedicated to educators and ecology in the Galapagos Islands, and to take over Como’s social media accounts with real-time posts about what they were learning on the way. 

Their adventure started last July, when the pair joined Ecology Project International and met with their group in Quito, Ecuador. Their cohort of fellow educators came from as far away as Australia and Kazakhstan, and quickly bonded over their common love of tortoises, which they encountered on their first day, roaming through the highlands. “Just to see tortoises out in the greenery, in their natural ecosystem was amazing to us,” says Verdeck. “We were all acting like little kids, we were so excited.”

The group got the chance to collect biometric data on the 13 different tortoise species that occupy the Galapagos Islands, including one nearly 100-year-old animal that had never been studied before. As the group toured the volcanic archipelago, they could also see how each species has adapted to its own microhabitat.

“You’ll have tortoises that look very different from one island to another island,” Ahiers explains. “Tortoises that live where it’s very green and rainy look a lot like Como Zoo’s Irwin, who eats plants and grasses on the ground. But tortoises that live in scrubland have a different shape and size, including an aperture that’s a lot wider, so they can reach their heads up and eat cacti.” 

Verdeck and Ahiers got a chance to visit a tortoise breeding center, where they visited the memorial for Lonesome George, the last ever Pinta Island tortoise in the world, who has become a conservation icon for the Galapagos. The team also took part in highland restoration, helping with a conservation project working to manage invasive African snails, and studying their effect on the ecosystem. 

Another day, they hiked to the famed Tortuga Bay, performing a survey on the prevalence of microplastics. “We were walking on a pristine beach, with no trash anywhere, but when you start sifting through it, you find these microplastics that are the size of a needle tip,” says Verdeck. “You start to realize how hard it is to get away from this problem.” 

While moments like this were eye-opening for Ahiers and Verdeck, the pair say it was also inspiring, helping them to create a new Little Explorers curriculum that mimics some of the activities and lessons they learned during their trip. “You want to start kids young, and get them caring about conservation early in life—the earlier the better,” says Verdeck. “If you can teach them not to throw wrappers on the ground, and to put them in the garbage right away, that’s a good place to start.”

As the team posted updates about their travels, they also made strong connections with other educators in their group that have continued even since they returned to Como. “We were the only non-formal educators on the team, and sometimes it can be hard to translate why zoos are here, and what our role is,” says Ahiers. “But we have an important contribution to make, because we’re here to teach people about conservation, about what we can do to keep species safe and thriving, and to protect ecosystems. Conservation Champions really helped us to make those connections.”

Each year Nature Walk volunteers engage with an estimated 250,000 visitors, most of them younger children, role modeling the idea that caring about conservation is cool

Wally Hlavac, a conservation biology major at the University of Minnesota, spent his summer traipsing across Madagascar, doing field surveys of the island’s birds, butterflies, and lemurs. He credits his time as a Como Nature Walk volunteer with helping him take the first step. 

Hlavac was a summer camper at Como several years ago when he encountered his first Nature Walk volunteer, one of 50-some teens recruited each spring and summer to help bring Como’s animal and plant collections a little closer to Como’s nearly two million annual visitors. “I think he came in to show us a rabbit, and I decided that was something I really wanted to do, too,” says Hlavac, who applied and was accepted into the selective program when he was in ninth grade. 

Through Nature Walk, teens are provided training on a variety of Como’s conservation themes, from the rainforest and reptiles, to beneficial bugs and plants, that they go on to share with Como visitors at interpretive stations arrayed around Como’s grounds. “It was the first time in my life that I got to teach people about conservation and concepts that I’m really passionate about,” Hlavac says.

The program, which includes professional development training, also pushed him to develop greater confidence and public speaking skills. “I was a really awkward kid, but being able to go to Como and talk to people, and answer their questions was really great for me,” he says. “It motivated me to try hard, and get Como visitors engaged, because those encounters felt really good.” Each year, in fact, Nature Walk volunteers engage with an estimated 250,000 visitors, most of them younger children, role modeling the idea that caring about conservation is cool.

After a pause during the pandemic, Como’s Nature Walk program was back at full power this summer, with a full complement of teen volunteers on campus sharing their insights on the smallest insects and the tallest giraffes. While not every teen will go on to pursue careers in conservation, Hlavac says there’s no doubt the experience helped him recognize that protecting the natural world could be his calling. 

“I think the overall curriculum of Nature Walk really does inspire a love for natural science in any capacity, and learning more about animals and plants and being able to share that with people was really exciting,” he says. “I know it really cemented conservation in my mind as something I want to continue doing.”

This year, your support for Como Friends made it possible to invest in Como’s Nature Walk program with the hiring of Maddie Becker to fill a new assistant role.“Working with Nature Walk has been a fantastic experience. The kids have worked hard this summer, and it’s been so uplifting to help foster an environment where they’ve not only been so welcoming and enthusiastic with the guests that visit their carts, but also in their relationships with each other. Each day they express so much joy for life and the natural world that I am left with nothing but immense hope for our future.”

As a Conservation Champion, Como Zoo primate keeper Em Brunmeier traveled to Peru to learn more about spider monkeys in the wild

Behind the scenes in Como Zoo’s Primate Building, Brunmeier has become a big fan of the four spider monkeys in her care—Gomez, Katie, Ellie, and Jazz—and she applied to learn more about their cousins in the wild through Conservation Champions, the Como Friends micro-grant program that encourages Como’s keepers and horticulturists to take part in conservation efforts in the field. After researching conservation projects around South America, she decided that the Kawsay Biological Station in Puerto Maldonado, Madre de Dios, Peru was the place to be. 

“What was really special about this location was that the team there had been able to bring back and restore a spider monkey population that had been locally extinct, and that was something that I was really excited to be part of, and to see how they were managing that,” she says. “They also work with other scientists in the area, like botanists and PhD students from abroad to research other parts of the ecosystem and how they all correlate with spider monkeys. I really wanted the chance to learn more about how all of these factors come together.” 

As part of the project, Brunmeier joined a team of researchers tracking spider monkeys that had been previously released into the Tambopata National Reserve to study the seasonal variation of their behavior. “With no GPS collars or other tracking devices, it was quite a task,” she says. “We had no guarantee we would find them and had to go pretty far into the Amazon rainforest.” But once the spider monkeys were located, Brunmeier got the chance to hear the full chorus of their vocalizations. “For spider monkeys in the wild, their home range is nearly 700 acres, and they often split up their group and then reunite at night to sleep together,” she says. “To do all of that requires quite a lot of logistics, so they’ve come up with quite a lot of vocalizations. They have little chirping sounds that they make when they’re close to each other, and really loud, bellowing calls that they use to try and find each other over long distances. It was so fun listening to them—they  have lots of things to say.” 

During her two and a half weeks in the field, Brunmeier also got the chance to care for young spider monkeys in a rehabilitation facility. “That’s where my personal expertise came in handy, because hands-on care of the animals is what I do every day,” she says. “I was also able to talk with the team about how we do primate enrichment at AZA [Association of Zoos and Aquariums] institutions in the U.S., which is something I’m passionate about.” 

Caring for polar bears every day can be exhausting. Just ask Como Zoo’s Julie Yarrington, one of a team of aquatics keepers who keep an eagle eye on Como’s three polar bears, Nan, Kulu, and Neil.

Earlier this year, Neil was diagnosed with gastric dilatation-volvulus, or bloat, an urgent medical condition that required emergency surgery. Surgery is a risk for any animal, but especially for one as old as Neil, now nearing 28 years of age, and one of the oldest male polar bears in North America.

“Because of his age, there was a high risk that he wouldn’t rebound,” says Yarrington, who spent more than a month “just hoping we could get him to eat, eat, eat. It was very mentally exhausting.”

Fortunately, after a few weeks, Neil pulled through and has been very particular about his diet, showing a strong preference for his favorite comfort food of canned salmon and canned tuna. As Neil has regained strength and been reintroduced to his companions, keepers have changed the polar bears’ feeding schedule to cut Neil’s risk of further complications. “Instead of getting a big breakfast in the morning, we now feed him three to four times a day,” Yarrington says. 

To allow his incision to heal, Neil had to stay out of the water and away from his favorite companion, Nan, a feisty 28-year-old female. Brought to Como Zoo three years ago in order to be a non-breeding partner to Neil following the death of Buzz, his twin brother, the pairing between the two elder bears has worked out beautifully. 

“Neil just wants to be wherever Nan is,” says Yarrington. “It was hard for him at first, but once it healed up he was able to get to the pool and was able to clean himself up. Guests may not really notice his incision site, which is already covered up by fur.”

Your Give to the Max Day contributions to Como Friends help to provide cutting-edge veterinary care to animals like Neil, ensuring both great veterinary care and the creature comforts that keep animals healthy and curious. “While he’s been recovering, he’s also been into his other favorite foods, Cool Whip and sherbet—in moderation,” Yarrington says. “When you live to be the oldest male polar bear in North America, you definitely deserve a couple of spoonfuls of sherbet.”

A trip to the Polar Bear Capital of the World helped teach Como Zoo keeper Kristin Riske new ways to talk about climate change

Back in 2008 when the polar bear became the first animal listed under the Endangered Species Act to be threatened primarily by climate change, we all learned how individual choices here at home can help improve conditions in the Arctic. From turning off unneeded lights, to driving less, to choosing products with less packaging, many zoo visitors at Arctic Ambassador Centers like Como Zoo are now well-versed in all the individual choices that can contribute to a more sustainable future. 

But could there be a better way to talk about what’s happening to polar bears?

That’s the question Como Zoo aquatics keeper Kristin Riske has been exploring as a Conservation Champion, the Como Friends program that funds professional development experiences and on-site field work for several zookeepers and horticulturists each year. With support from the program, Riske joined a cohort of other keepers and educators in the Climate Alliance Program, a unique Polar Bears International partnership program aimed at empowering conservation professionals—many, like Riske, who care for polar bears every day—to effectively communicate about climate change and inspire real-world solutions.

“Como has been part of the Arctic Ambassador Network for years, and this program is designed especially for institutions like ours,” Riske says. “As zookeepers, we’re in a great position to get the message out to the public.”

The program started early in 2023, as Riske and other zookeepers and educators took part in an eight-month online learning course, created in partnership with National Network for Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation. Through the training, Riske learned about the latest best practice communication strategies around climate change, and how building awareness and support for climate solutions has evolved over time. 

“Having this training through Climate Alliance really changed my view on how to get the message across,” says Riske, who got her start as a Como Zoo intern back in 2014. “Back when I started, it was all about how we should turn off our lights and recycle, but through this program, I’ve learned it’s more about the collective action that we need to take—voting for the climate, creating community gardens, shifting to renewable energy, advocating for community-wide or city-based sustainability programs.” 

Last month, the Climate Alliance Program culminated in a week-long trip to Churchill, Manitoba, the polar bear capital of the world. “It was really early in the season, still in the 40s and 50s, so we only saw one bear—a female sleeping near the coast,” Riske says. “But being out in the Tundra Buggy exceeded my expectations in every way. We got to see ptarmigan and caribou, and got the chance to meet and talk with the indigenous people of Churchill who told us more about the land around us.” 

Now back at Como Zoo where she cares for polar bears Neil, Nan, and Kulu, Riske says her Conservation Champions experience continues to inspire her. “There really are no words to encapsulate what I experienced,” she says. “I went into this Climate Alliance program to learn more about polar bears, climate change, and what we can do to help. What I didn’t know was the bond I would form with all of these amazing people from different facilities that want to do the same thing. I am still processing my experience up in Churchill, but one thing I do know is I have become more empowered, and a spark has grown in me that wants to advocate for climate change. I can’t thank Polar Bears International, Frontiers North Adventures, Como Park Zoo and Conservatory, and Como Friends enough for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Your support for Como Friends helps to make the Conservation Champions program possible, supporting Como’s talented staff’s participation in conservation partnerships and in their continued professional development. Thank you!