For the last decade, the Albuquerque BioPark has organized this celebration in an effort to educate, raise awareness, and support conservation efforts to protect primates in the wild.
This year, the BioPark aims to raise $20,000 for the Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Program and the Pan-African Sanctuary Alliance.
Agena said that all the proceeds will go directly to the organization in areas such as Africa to help address poaching, deforestation, and other factors affecting the declining populations of chimpanzees and gorillas.
“The money that we make from the items that we sell go directly to organizations in these areas, so Africa, for example, that will help with the poaching, the deforestation, things like that that are declining the populations of the chimpanzees or gorillas,” she said.
Each week, the zoo will dedicate an education station to a different great ape; this week’s talk centers around chimpanzees.
“And every Saturday we’ll be kind of talking a little bit about each species and what they’re facing and why their populations are declining,” Agena explained further.
A parent and an educator expressed their joy at these kinds of events, which provide a great way to teach kids outside of the traditional classroom setting.
“It’s really important to be able to expose her to the things she’s seen in the books that we’ve read and the things she’s seen on shows like Wild Kratts, for example, that she really loves to watch about animals and stuff,” Schall explained.
Schall sees this as not only a great learning opportunity for her daughter, but also as their quality time as a family.