ABOUT WILD BY NATURE, Inc.
Mis
sion Statement
WILD BY NATURE is a nonprofit corporation devoted to environmental education for youth. Our mission is to teach suburban school children and their teachers about local neighborhood endangered species and threatened habitats. Our purpose is to provide the academic tools to select, adopt, and protect local species, and to appreciate the global implications of the local ecosystem. Our grand design is to encourage every school in the nation (approximately 125,000) to adopt a local endangered plant or animal species.
After 20+ years of vernal pool habitat work, in 2014 we changed our focus to emphasize a Zero Carbon Footprint fashion statement. Regardless of where you live, anyone can help the environment by wearing secondhand and vintage attire. You can enjoy haute couture and know that you are part of the solution. Visit our page Fashion for the New Millennium, or our blog Fashion for the New Millennium.
About Us
The Children’s Ecology Club was inspired by my first grader in 1989. Supported solely by student-operated fundraisers, the club raised environmental consciousness through community activities. We successfully created a Continuum of Environmental Education, K-12, for local, neighborhood environmental studies. Reflected in our motto “One Person CAN Make a Difference!,” we seek to empower schoolchildren by encouraging them to know and adopt their own suburban neighborhood habitat.
In 1994, we incorporated as WILD BY NATURE, Inc. (501[c]3). With emphasis on habitat instruction and community service guidance, our diligence saved four endangered
neighborhood vernal pool habitats from development and kept an additional one in unremitting mitigation. For our efforts, we earned local, state, and national awards, and over $45,000 from environmental competitions. The award money was used to establish environmental libraries and GroLabs® in three neighborhood schools. We designed a local wildflower poster and neighborhood endangered species bookmark, distributing 10,000 copies of each to San Diego schoolchildren. Our Continuum of Environmental Education linked with San Diego Miramar College, thus connecting four neighborhood schools, K-14, plus two bi-national (California and Mexico) environmental groups.
There was great support for our work. In 1996, WILD BY NATURE harnessed the energy of community volunteers (see participant list below) and orchestrated the transformation of a vernal pool habitat into a Nature Learning Center with self-guided nature trails. After months of planning and protocol, and only ten days prior to launching the all-volunteer park enhancement day, San Diego City Park and Recreation Dept. had a political change of heart, blocked all public access, and locked us out. The area lay fallow until 2009, when the Mira Mesa High School Ecology Club reinvigorated interest in vernal pool studies. Environmental work takes patience and persistence, but the results can be monumental. It is exciting to know that a small group of community-spirited individuals can help build a better world.
WILD BY NATURE, Inc. expanded our focus from schoolchildren to schoolteachers. Based in curriculum-building and professional development, our aspiration is to empower and empassion California schoolteachers to teach environmental education in a purposeful and forward-thinking manner that will help carry us through the 21st century. We offer our education models to you with the intention of building community. See Environmental Education, Eco-Education Models.
Participants in our Habitat Studies:
- Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Eagle Scouts, Girl Scouts
- California Native Plant Society
- Challenger Middle School
- Hickman Elementary School
- Independent community members
- Mira Mesa High School Science and Voc Tech Departments
- Department of Fish and Game
- San Diego City Park and Recreation Department
- San Diego State University Biology Department, Vernal Pools
- San Diego Unified School District
- Sunday School church and synagogue groups
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