OUIL601 - WCS brand identity.

I was browsing through the WCS website and came across a page talking about their new brand identity.

"Our new mark visualizes this promise with a stylized W. Made of simple geometry, the mark can project a wide range of expressions from serious to lively, capable of containing colors and images, designed to appeal to everyone from park visitors to policy makers."

I think it's important for charities to keep up to date with their branding and make it appealing to a aid audience, as they said above. Utilising every possible platform is essential when trying to create a campaign and get your message out there.

OUIL601 - Threats to wildlife

- Habitat destruction - bulldozing trees, filling in wetlands, dredging rivers, mowing fields
- Habitat fragmentation - Remaining wildlife habitat is cut up and divided by roads and development
- Habitat degradation - Pollution, invasive species, disruption of eco - system processes

• Disease
• Global warming
• Unregulated hunting and poaching
• Pollution
• Public indifference 
• Over exploitation of wildlife

- Increasing human population

Disease
- Disease's are a normal part of every ecosystem, and healthy ecosystems have evolved ways of fending of potentially harmful diseases that could have disastrous consequences.
Ecosystems that are not as healthy as they should be and are threatened by pollution and habitat degradation are more vulnerable to emerging diseases.

Global Warming
- Global warming is becoming one of the biggest threats to wildlife worldwide.
- Many species of wildlife take cues from nature as to when they should, migrate, hibernate, nest, mate, etc. Global warming is confusing those signals and the changes in climate force the wildlife to change their natural cycles.

- Widespread forest loss due to warming and drought are causing trees to die and making them more vulnerable to beetle infestations.

- Coral bleaching happens when the algae that live in the reefs die out or expelled from the corals due to stress. The algae provide the coral with nutrients and oxygen. Scientists believe that the main cause of coral bleaching is the warm sea surface temperatures that are caused by global warming.

- Arctic ice, which arctic mammals such as polar bears, walrus and seals, depend upon to survive, is melting at an alarming rate. It is melting at a much faster pace than what was predicted just a few years ago.

Habitat Loss

One of the biggest threats to wildlife is habitat loss, due to destruction, such as bulldozing trees, filling in wetland and mowing fields etc.
When an ecosystem is drastically changed by human activity such as agriculture and commercial development, it may often not be able to provide water, food and shelter for the wildlife that depend upon it for survival.

The main components of habitat loss in the US are:
- Agriculture
- Land conversion for development
- Water development
- Pollution
- Global warming

OUIL601 - WCS Wildlife conservation society

The wildlife conservation society was founded in 1895, and has the clear mission to save wildlife and wild places across the globe.

They protect many of the world's iconic creatures here and abroad including, gorillas in the Congo, tigers in India, Wolverines in the Yellowstone Rockies and also many sea animals.

With a commitment to protect 50 percent of the world’s biodiversity, we address four of the biggest issues facing wildlife and wild places: climate change; natural resource exploitation; the connection between wildlife health and human health; and the sustainable development of human livelihoods. 

Through expansive population surveys, high-tech tools like camera traps and radio collars, and collaboration with a wide array of local, national, and international partners, WCS is working to conserve key wildlife populations across our project sites. Our conservationists are working with over 350 species around the globe, and continue to make new discoveries. We are also committed to the conservation of a selected set of “global priority species” that are vulnerable to extinction, important to humans, and powerful icons of nature.

OUIL601 - Beginning my research

I know it's a bad source, but I began looking at the Conservation movement wikipedia page to try and help me find different sources to branch out.

The conservation movement is:

-Political

-Environmental 

-Social 

Early conservation movement:

-Fisheries

-Wildlife management

-Water

-Soil conservation

-Sustainable forestry

Contemporary conservation movement:

-preservation of biodiversity

The movement can be traced back to as early as 1662 with John Evelyn's work Sylva, it was published as a book in 1664 and is a highly influential texts on forestry in response to England's depleting timber resources.
The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out.

I need to find out, what were the causes of the conservation movement, why did it come about? who were the first people to really push it forward?

OUIL601 - How the hell do I start my dissertation research?

So my question is "How can illustration inspire an interest in wildlife/nature conservation in primary school children?"

Areas of initial research:

-compile a list of wildlife/nature conservation websites and collect information from them
-look into the history of nature conservation
-look into local nature places and contact them for advice/research

My aim for practical side of stuff is to create an educational pack for primary school children age between 5-8 ish and take it into schools to test run with children and also take it to naturey places and ask them if they'd want it in their shops. I've emailed quite a few places already, including my old primary school, but I doubt I'll get a response any time soon with it being the summer hols.