Hope for Children
KE on Pamunkey River – King William County Dec 12
December 18, 2013Camellia – Benefit Rd – Chesapeake Dec 19
December 19, 2013
Cover of children’s book “Hope is Here” by Cristina Kessler. Christina Kessler (author) & Marcos Castillo (illustrator).
Each year for Christmas the First Lady of the U.S. Virgin Islands presents a new book to all of the children (K-3rd grade) throughout the Territory. The books are hard-bound editions that are intended to be keepsakes for the children. This year’s book, “Hope is Here,” was written by well-known children’s author Cristina Kessler of St. John. It is a conservation story based on Hope the whimbrel, a bird made famous through The Center for Conservation Biology’s whimbrel tracking project. CCB’s Fletcher Smith provided information about Hope for the book and is featured on the cover. The book is available on Amazon.
Connecting children to nature is a vital element of the conservation mission. Hope has made conservation real to the general public and to children of the U.S. Virgin Islands who have followed her travels and are familiar with her winter home. Each fall since 2009 Hope has returned to Great Pond, a 50 hectare mangrove wetland located on the southeast coast of St. Croix, to spend the winter. The site has become a tangible symbol of conservation for those species like Hope that migrate thousands of miles between breeding and winter grounds.
Hope has become an ambassador for migrants. She has made tremendous nonstop flights, moved great distances out over the open Atlantic, confronted storms while at sea, navigated with precision to stopover sites and shown high fidelity to her breeding site, her wintering site, and several staging areas. Her story as revealed through satellite tracking serves to further educate the public about the wonders of migration.
Fletcher Smith with Hope – Fletcher Smith holds Hope in Great Pond after removal of transmitter on 20 November, 2012. Photo by Lisa Yntema.
Hope is one of more than two dozen birds that have been tracked in a collaborative effort between The Center for Conservation Biology, The Nature Conservancy, US Fish and Wildlife Service, Georgia Department of Natural Resources Non-game Division, Canadian Wildlife Service, Manomet Center for Conservation Sciences, and Virginia Coastal Zone Management, designed to discover migratory routes that connect breeding and winter areas and to identify migratory staging areas that are critical to the conservation of this declining species.
Written by Bryan Watts | bdwatt@wm.edu | (757) 221-2247
December 18, 2013
Related posts
A bald eagle nest just off the Poropotank River in Virginia in 2003. A nest with two equal young and ample food was a normal scene during this time period. This reflects a golden period during the late 1990s and early 2000s when males had more leisure time to hunt and provide for broods. Photo by Catherine Markham.
Breeding female on the Eltham Bridge. This female was hatched on Elkins Marsh along the seaside of the Delmarva in 2010 and has held the territory on the Eltham Bridge since 2013 with three successive males. She has been very aggressive and protective of the nest site and has held the territory together. She was found with a wing injury from a collision in December and could not be rehabilitated. She is one of a number of falcons that have been documented to go down in 2022. Photo by Bryan Watts.