Corinna's Cat Toys Help Raise Funds for Tapir Conservation

This Malayan tapir is one of Corinna Bechko's famous cat toys. She makes the most imaginative things for cats to play with! You can find this tapir and many astonishing pieces of functional art for cats (a "cat's guide to fossils"? Amazing!) and for humans (jewelry, boxes, etc., etc.) in Corinna's Etsy shop, The Frog Bag. You can also find The Frog Bag on Facebook and by going to The Frog Bag's blog.

Yesterday Corinna and The Frog Bag donated $50.00 to the Tapir Preservation Fund. This donation came from sales in the Etsy shop, and brought The Frog Bag's donations to a total of $550.00!

Corinna has had a long-standing interest in tapirs and has been a supporter of tapir conservation long before The Frog Bag came into existence. She also contributes to tapir conservation by letting us sell her wonderful animal jewelry in Tapir and Friends Animal Store online. Here you can find tapirs and other critters, too.

Thanks, Corinna! And thanks to those who purchase and enjoy your wonderful creations!

Please e-mail your photos and text if you would like to see them on this blog.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.
Join WORLD TAPIR DAY on Facebook.

Contribution Helps Tapirs in Belize

Belize Zoo ~ June 1, 2010

Sharon Matola with baby Baird's tapir

Today we are excited to be sending a donation of $500.00 from David F. to The Belize Zoo. When Sharon learned about the donation, she sent us this photo of herself with one of the zoo's most recent residents, an adorable baby Baird's tapir. The zoo accepts only orphaned or damaged animals, and although this tapir has lost his biological mother, he now has a loving home as an ambassador for wildlife in the Belize Zoo. He may just become the hero of a children's story in the coming months. It would not be the first time Sharon has featured tapirs and the other wild animals of Belize in stories that have made a huge and continuing impact on the way Belizeans and visitors to Belize understand and appreciate the ecology of this small, Central American country.

David's donation will help Sharon pay for a recent project - the completion of a film about the important role that tapirs and other animals of the forests play, standing and healthy, in decreasing the negative impacts of climate change.

Thank you, David. Thank you, Sharon. We are happy to forward 100% of David's donation to help make this happen.

Donations for the important work of the Belize Zoo can be made through the Tapir Preservation Fund or through the Belize's Zoo's web site.

Please e-mail your photos and text if you would like to see them on this blog.

This blog is sponsored by Tapir and Friends Animal Store.
Join WORLD TAPIR DAY on Facebook.

Tapir Preservation Fund (TPF) ~ Catching up on donations and funding ~ What have we been doing?

A recent e-mail from Caitlin gave me the excuse I needed to post some numbers and an explanation:

December 16, 2009

Dear Caitlin,

Thank you for asking what we've been doing in 2009, since the Tapir Gallery Web site has not been updated recently. It seems that the last thing I get around to is putting current info on the site. This is truly unfortunate, and it should be done regularly. We've been keeping busy over here, as you'll see in a minute. I kept looking for a good format for donation and disbursement info on the site, and came up with several formats that didn't really work. The format is hard to understand and is incomplete. At least I should put it on the info on the blog, and I do have some clarity for public announcements in 2010. For now, here it is what I have for the past four years.

None of the years addressed on the web site as it is right now reflects the whole picture. Here are the actual totals going back to 2006:

2006

. Contributions income: $3,452

. Donations from TPF to the field: $2,700

The difference was used by the Tapir Preservation Fund internally.

2007

. Contributions income: $10,415

. Donations from us to the field: $19,492

The difference was paid from our gift shop sales.

2008

. Contributions income: $4,972

. Donations from TPF to the field: $17,467

The difference was paid from our gift shop sales.

2009 Year to Date (Dec 16)

. Contributions income: $3,261

. Donations to the field: $2,951

We still have money to send to the field, see below.

2009's donations went to:

. Wilson Novarino (Sumatra, Asian tapir)

. Sergio Sandoval (Colombia, Mountain tapir genetics)

. Kendra Bauer (USA/Costa Rica, Baird's tapir)

We will soon be sending over $1,000 to two projects, one of which is still to be determined.

What we've been doing with our time this year is that we've been improving the gift shop. We installed a new shopping cart to be up with the times (and our old one was discontinued by the credit card company), and that was a huge effort getting everything to work right. We've been upgrading the store in many ways and trying to make ends meet in the slow economy. Hopefully this next year I'll have time to work more on the tapir web site and also work more with various tapir colleagues working in the field. I have ideas for new fundraising projects, and I may think about bringing back Club Tapir once the economy begins to recover. It became more time-consuming than it was worth for the amount we collected in donations.

Many thanks to all of you who have helped with your ideas, photos, and donations!

Here's to a creative, productive, and prosperous 2010 for everyone. . . .

All the best,

Sheryl

Club Tapir page ready for September's donations

Hi All,

The new page is up. A few changes have been made, and you can see and vote for the current projects via this link. The tapir projects represent long hours of ongoing work - every day, every week, every year. It's so gratifying to see that, whereas a number of years ago tapir work was sporadic and the projects were short, the tapir world now has a number of quality projects that have a longevity of production stretching for years, not months. These projects, like the new ones, need ongoing support. You can read about and help to support one of four tapir conservation and research projects here:

http://www.tapirback.com/tapirgal/club-tapir/

I wish I could show you more of the actual work that's being done in the field. It's been a goal of the Tapir Preservation Fund to make more of the material available. It is labor-intensive to get the work from the field onto a web site, and I simply haven't had as much time as I'd like to devote to this area. (Volunteers are welcome!) More and more projects are developing their own sites, and we've linked to the ones we know about. It's a lot of work for anyone involved - the research and conservation aspect, and then the proposals and marketing on top of that. There is always so much more going on behind the scenes than can be presented. If you're interested in a particular project, the Principal Investigator (PI) will probably have proposals or material you can read. Just ask and we'll help you contact them. You can also read about ongoing tapir projects on the IUCN/SSC Tapir Specialist Group web site. Thanks so much for your support and interest!

Thanks for thinking of us!

On Friday we received a surprise check for $100.00 and a wonderful letter:

Greetings,

My travelling companion and I were strolling the river walk back in April of this year, having come to town on a cruise ship. We were thrilled to find your store! Who'd have thought, a preservation organization up in chilly Astoria focused on preserving a tropical species.

By the way, the adorable Coati Mundi that I purchased that day sits atop my computer monitor at this very moment.

I've had a soft spot in my heart for Tapirs ever since encountering an Asian tapir at the Stone Zoo in Massachusetts as a child. Enclosed is a small donation for your general fund.

Sincerely,

Eugene in Oakland

A heartwarming donation and letter

First, I like to start blog posts with a photo, and I came across this cool picture either from the Santa Barbara Zoo in California, or the Virginia Zoo. I wish I had labelled it at the time. It was sent to me in 1996, and the date on the photo is June 2, 1996. The difference in size between mom and baby Baird's tapir is clear to see. I love the poses, and it's one of the rare photos in which you can see the stripe pattern on the baby's back.

This post is actually about a mother and her son and the son's friend. They are not tapirs, but humans. Kay wrote to us in June 2008, and included a check for $77.15:

My son Maxwell collected this money for the tapirs. We have a couple of them here at our Fresno Chaffee Zoo and he has taken a real interest in them. He researched them online and found your website. He printed out pictures and created a notebook with facts and photos. He along with his friend Bronson did a presentation to their 5th Grade class, and over the course of 2 months of passing a jar around with pictures of tapirs on it managed to collect this money.

He also started a T is for Tapir Club where they wear their T-shirts and go around telling everyone how great [tapirs] are.

When I called your organization to find out how you would like me to send the money (not a box full of loose change! Ha! Ha!) I was told you could send a certificate to each of the boys. I know that would make them feel good so I'm going to put their addresses at the bottom.

Thank you and give a tapir a hug for us!

Kay in California

New tapir art by Mary Beaird in our CafePress store

Dear Tapir Fans and Friends,

These whimsical romping tapirs were drawn and donated to the Tapir Fund by English artist Mary Beaird. Check out the pet dishes, wrap-around design on mugs and steins and the bumper stickers we've made available in our CafePress shop. As with our TPF online gift shop, proceeds help support tapir conservation in the field!

Sheryl

Donate to help save tapirs ~ Club Tapir projects for May are now online!

Lowland tapirs, Argentina

Asian tapir, Sumatra, Indonesia

Baird's tapir, Mexico

Mountain tapir, Colombia

Above are four photographic hints about the current Club Tapir Projects. One is brand new, three are old favorites. Vote for one, vote for several. Your votes = dollars for tapir conservation! Check them out and place your vote. This month we have all four tapir species represented by projects you can select. One hundred percent of your voting dollars go to the winning project. The Tapir Preservation Fund pays the administration costs, including costs to wire or send money to the winner. This month, our matching funds have run out, so every vote we can get is needed to help fund the project. These are wonderful conservation efforts. Please take a look!

We had some very close voting in April. The winners for March and April will be posted soon. April was so busy here that I never got the Club Tapir page updated. Thanks to your persistence and generosity we had votes and a winner anyway. I'm writing this from my laptop on the road and I must get moving, so . . . updates for those two months will be available soon!

Announcing World Tapir Day: 27 April 2008!

What an exciting event! The tapirs are finally getting a holiday of their own! Anthony Long of Australia has been working night and day to put together the first World Tapir Day. This is truly an event whose time has come! It arrives with a new and beautifully-designed web site, some must-have tapir t-shirts, and a conservation initiative to donate funds raised from the sale of merchandise to the Belize Zoo for Sharon Matola's ongoing and ground-breaking conservation work. Please read more about why she can always use funding on the World Tapir Day Web site.

LINKS:

World Tapir Day Official Web Site

Anthony's Excellent Tapir Blog

World Tapir Day discussion and announcement on Google Group: TAPIRS

World Tapir Day Merchandise on CafePress

Tapir Wachswaren GmbH: Do tapirs polish their shoes? Read on . . .

I want to thank our friends at Tapir Wachswaren GmbH in Germany for their thoughtful and generous donation to the Tapir Preservation Fund. As always, this money is used for projects in the field, as we raise money for TPF's business expenses and some of the field work from our online gift shop.

Tapir Wachswaren sells high-quality shoe polish and is an environmentally-conscious company. They also love tapirs. We love their logo. Please follow the first link on this post and have a look for yourself. You might want to buy some shoe polish just to get the beautiful can even if you wear shoes that don't require polish! It's VERY cool!