Awesome event in LA for environmental educators

Over 100 community organizations set up booths on the exquisite lawns and inside the exhibit hall at the LA Arboretum on March 15.   Educators, parents and youngsters of all ages flocked by the hundreds to soak in their enticing and enlightening exhibits and to learn how they can contribute to conservation for wildlife.

Volunteers for the Cavity Conservation Initiative (CCI) drew enthusiastic attention to their booth which focused on the value of dying trees to wildlife.  At times attendees were three people deep.  Volunteers noted that some kids kept coming back to it.  Why?  Games like Rocks in my Socks, Blocks in my Box and Log Lodgers were just irresistible.  Of course, two big pieces of eye candy for the littlest ones were the big hollow tree stump filled with cuddly, squeezable critters, and the program’s woodpecker mascot, Mr. Edison, who hugged a dead tree that held a sign Please Save my Family Tree!  The large, crochet woodpecker gets his name from his sponsor, the Edison Company.

Every item at the booth told some aspect of the story of how dying trees help wildlife and why we need more of them.  Countless O-shaped mouths and wide eyes suggested that this was new and surprising information.  And several educators left with a compact teaching kit in order to deliver the program in their own sphere of work.  What a gratifying event for the Cavity Conservation Initiative and their fiscal supporters the Edison Company, Pasadena Audubon and Fund for Wild Nature!