Profile of an Education Liaison

Stacey Johnson, Curator of Texas Wild!, Fort Worth Zoo
Liaison for the Jaguar SSP since 1998.

How did you get involved as a liaison?

When the SSP was formed, I volunteered to work on anything available for the program.

Describe your professional background.

I have a BS in Zoology. I worked for a year at Busch Gardens in their education department, three years as Curator of Education at The Zoo (Gulf Breeze, FL), four years as the General Curator at ZOOWORLD (Panama City Beach, FL, four years as General Curator Palm Beach Zoo and six plus years as the Curator of Texas Wild.

Program accomplishments

Three years of publishing a (small) newsletter, which started generating interest in the SSP; and then building a Jaguar SSP website to connect jaguar managers and provide natural history and conservation info on the species.

Where have you found funding for your program efforts?

An SSP member institution - Palm Beach Zoo - funded the creation of the website and first five years of its Internet hosting.

What have been your biggest challenges as a liaison?

Building interest and momentum for the species among zoos. The Jaguar SSP's mission has been to build a sustainable, healthy captive population for educational purposes. Initially, there was a significant need for heightened awareness, understanding and cooperation among participating institutions. Without those things, it would be an SSP in name only.

Probably the second greatest challenge has been taking the scarce verifiable information about the species' ecology and cultural relevance across its geographic range and assembling useful educational materials.

What have been your biggest rewards as a liaison?

The best feeling I've had as the Jaguar SSP Education Liaison has been to watch the website grow from fewer than 200 hits per week to more than 200 visits per day. I've been contacted by a South American grad student wanting to know if we had a Spanish language translation of materials from the site. (It turned out that we were about a week away from posting the husbandry manual in Spanish at the time, so I was able to meet his need.)

What are your goals for the program?

To continue "cheer leading" for the species, both in terms of promoting the species' importance in AZA collections, and to build wider understanding and support for the species in the public's eyes - throughout its geographic range.

Words of Wisdom

Think outside your traditional assumptions about being an Education Liaison. Educating our "internal" audiences may have as much, or more, impact as sharing knowledge with the public. And, getting involved with field conservation and research provides another avenue educating both those groups. Oh, yeah: it also helps to be shameless in promoting your species.

Being the ed liaison for jaguars has impacted me by getting me involved working with a species in which I was already interested. Contacts with and access to other zoos and professionals working with jaguars enabled me to spearhead a couple of imports from range countries and to initiate a field project in Mexico. Ultimately, it led to my being appointed as SSP Coordinator. It has also led to more thorough professional networking in AZA, too. I know many more zoo people who are also involved in other fields now, and it has definitely broadened my horizons.

The Jaguar SSP is pretty much based at the Fort Worth Zoo. Although the vet advisor is at National Zoo, Education, Nutrition and the Coordinator have all been in Fort Worth for quite a while. The other tangible effect is that, we have wild-born, recommended breeding animals here because of an import I worked on. Finally, it has made me learn to delegate as a manager. Because of working on Jaguar SSP projects, I have shared more management responsibilities in my department so that tasks would be completed properly and on time. So, it has "encouraged" me to rely on the capabilities of the supervisors and assistant curator with whom I work.

I think there are probably more intangible impacts than measurable ones, though. Folks with jaguar questions, or with ideas for projects (imports, field research, etc.) frequently get referred here. So, there are many opportunities - and challenges! - available in trying to decide which ones to act upon.