Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] What is it that you want to be when you grow up?
[00:00:05] Some kids want to be astronauts. Some want to be doctors. Others want to be firefighters or police officers. Do you know what you want to be when you grow up? Go ahead and shout out your answer.
[00:00:21] It is a very, very important question to ask sometimes. And today I want to share with you why I became a conservationist and how you can become one, too. Welcome to planet CPR. Conserve, protect. Restore. A place to discover our planet near and far and in our backyard. I am your host, Fledge Fiamingo. And as a safari ranger from South Africa, I love to discover new things about the planet and the creatures that live around us and then share it with others. Even though we might not understand everything, like spiders, snakes and sharks, they are still important to the health of our planet. And discovering something new leads to understanding, and understanding leads to respect, and respect leads to conserving, protecting and restoring the planet we all share. So grab your thirst for knowledge and discover how we can make a difference today to conserve, protect and restore what we have left. What do you want to be when you grow up? That is the question for today and for me. I was never always a safari ranger, but when I did become one, one of the most fantastic questions that people would ask me is, hey, how did you become a safari ranger? What are the sort of things that you need to know? And why do you have this huge passion to look after our planet? And what is so fun is today I get to share this information with you. Are you ready? Growing up as a young boy in South Africa, yes, I enjoy playing sports. I play different types of sports. But as a family, we spent a lot of our time outdoors. We spent a lot of our time camping, and we spent a lot of our times visiting the national parks. The national parks are the areas in South Africa where we would go and look for elephants and we're going to look for zebra and the lions and all the antelope and the birds. And a lot of our time was spent outdoors. I grew up hiking and sailing and rowing. I enjoyed camping. In fact, most of the times and most weekends we were away camping with a family. And so my whole life was really designed about being outdoors. But I remember one experience so well. It was so exciting. And I remember it, I was six years old. And the family and I, we went out on a real safari, not where we were driving our own vehicle around a national park, but we went to a private reserve where we had our own safari vehicle and we had a game ranger, a safari ranger who hosted us for a few days. And I remember just looking at this man who was sharing all this amazing information about the animals and the trees and the. And the weather and the animal tracks. And I remember being six years old, going, oh, my gosh. And I remember thinking to myself, I want to do that job. What about you? Have you ever thought to yourself, wow, I want to be able to do that job one day, and then think, gosh, how do I get there? Do you enjoy discovering new things? I mean, come on, we are surrounded with so much technology these days. We have the Internet, we have smartphones, we have tablets. Have you ever thought how you could use this to figure out how you can do something that you want to do one day as a job? My story goes like this, and how I move forward in order to become a safari ranger and a conservationist. And it all began with discovering new things. Now, listen, I'm old, okay? I'm old. Yes, I have a smartphone, and yes, I know how to use it. But I grew up in the day when we had to find our information from books, or we would watch documentaries on television. And I absolutely loved watching David Attenborough make a documentary, and I would learn and discover so much just by listening and then sharing this information with my family. It was so cool because I would find out something new about a butterfly or a bird or a whale or some sort of antelope or monkey. And then when my family and I sat down and had dinner, I would just be so excited to say, hey, guys. I discovered this new thing about this creature, and they were just kind of laughing, going, really? There's a fish that lives at the bottom of the ocean that's got a little light that hangs in front of its face, and it uses as a fishing rod. And I'd go, yes, yes, look, there's pictures in the book. And it's quite incredible how they use this as a hunting style. And it was my enthusiasm that my family would sit down and just listen to all these new things that I had discovered about the creatures that live around us. And it didn't take long for me to start realizing one of my passions, and it was birds and identifying birds. I would sit down with one of those bird books that were printed, and I would just page to them day after day after day and start discovering and remembering the names of all these beautiful birds that we would get to see around our yard and in the national park. And it wasn't long until my family, and I'm the youngest of three boys. It wasn't long until my family, when we went out on our own safaris, where they would turn around and say to me, hey, look through the binoculars and tell us, what bird is that? And I would be able to identify it. And they were astounded because this little eight year old, nine year old, ten year old, as I got older, I was the one they were turning to for information about the creatures that we would see, and I loved doing that. But something very sad happened in my life, and I started to find out some very sad things. Are you ready to hear the sadness that I started feeling? Well, it boils down to me watching those stunning, stunning documentaries presented by David Attenborough. And I would sit glued to the tv for an hour, just listening to all this information and trying to absorb it. And he was so brilliant at putting that together. But right at the end, the last two, three or four minutes of the beautiful documentary, he would always say, sadly, this butterfly I've been telling you about, or the snow leopard that lives in the mountains, or a fish that lives in the sea, is endangered. In fact, it's on its way to becoming extinct, because we have destroyed the habitat that it needs to survive. We have removed the trees, we have polluted the oceans, we've built developments that have pushed them out, and they no longer have a place to stay. And my heart broke because I realized that all this beauty is gonna come to an end unless we do something about it. And that was one of the huge turning points of me not only wanting to become a safari ranger and share this beautiful information with people, but I wanted to make a difference. And at a young age, I decided that I was going to discover new things so that I can make a small difference today that might make a huge impact tomorrow. I wanted to become a. A conservationist. So what about you? Do you enjoy watching the documentaries that are available to us on all the streaming channels and on television? Do you enjoy sitting down and learning and discovering something new and just enthralled by the interactive experiences that are offered to you on your mobile device and your television, or maybe even just being outdoors? And when you discover new things, do you enjoy sharing that with others? Well, guess what? You have just become a conservationist. And it gets even better than that, because here is the difference that you could make today that would make a huge impact tomorrow. My encouragement to you is just have that continued thirst for knowledge, go and discover new things about the creatures that we share this planet with, and then find out what you can do to consume protect and restore the environment where they live. Maybe it's walking out into your yard and counting the trees and going, oh, my gosh, we only have two trees. Hey, can we plant more trees in our garden? Or maybe you go outside and you look and see, we don't have that many plants that attract the pollinators. What plants would be awesome in our yard to bring back the bees and the birds and the butterflies that will then rewild the areas that they need to live in. And then you can go one step further, find out what's happening within the community. Maybe there are organizations that are helping to clean up the rivers of all the plastics and fishing line. Maybe there are areas where the communities are planting new trees in order to rewild the area. Kids, adults, we can all become conservationists if we just discover a little bit of what's happening around us so that we can then have a hand to play in conserving, protecting and restoring what we have left. And the truth is, you don't have to be a safari ranger. You don't have to be outdoors all the time. You can be a conservationist. No matter what you do, whether you are a school teacher or a doctor or a nurse or a plumber, you can still make a small difference today. That's going to make a huge impact tomorrow. And hey, hey, hey, don't forget, a weed is just a plant that we don't want growing there. Until our next adventure and discovery together, this is Safari Ranger fledge Fiamingo signing off.
