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World Tapir Day 2015: Round-Up

12/5/2015

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We've been a little slack in posting a round-up of World Tapir Day in 2015, but here it is. There is a lot to report and, quite frankly, it has taken time just to work out exactly where events were held, by whom, and what they were. But we think we are there now.

World Tapir Day was busy in 2015, with a wide range of events taking place around the world, media coverage and online activity and discussion reaching levels never previously seen before. It was hard to keep up with it all, but we've done our best to summarise it for you.
We are so grateful to the people and organisations who made World Tapir Day so successful in 2015. Without your efforts and engagement there is no way that WTD could have grown to the level that it has.
Events took place in fourteen countries on five continents (full list, as far as we are aware of them, below), as well as some great coverage online. Leading the way was Japan, with events marking WTD taking place at ten zoos across the country - the most events in a single country in a year so far!

Longstanding supporters of WTD, the Adelaide Zoo, celebrated WTD for the sixth straight year with keeper talks and information tables. The Belize Zoo, which has been part of WTD since its inception in 2008, again marked the day in conjunction with its Belizean National Tapir Day celebrations that has been celebrated since 2011. Centre to the Belize Zoo's events was Fuego's second birthday party.
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World Tapir Day/National Tapir Day at the Belize Zoo
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Tapir artists were at the fore at CERZA in France, creating artworks for auctioning to raise funds for tapir conservation.
Elsewhere in Central and South America, Honduras saw its first event with an information stand in La Ceiba run by Grupo Pro-Tapir. Brazil also had its first WTD event with the Parque das Aves in Foz do Iguaçu, and the Zoo Córdoba celebrated across the border in Argentina.

Other countries that saw their first events marking WTD were Italy and Taiwan, where the Taipei Zoo linked WTD activities with Earth Day and celebrated across a two-week period!

Malaysia was host to an art exhibition at the Penang Performing Arts Centre (PenangPAC) of hundreds of Malayan tapir figurines made by schoolchildren across the country as part of the Tapir 2015 exhibition.

The Department of Wildlife and National Parks, PERHILITAN, ran a campaign to make Malaysian drivers alert to the dangers faced by tapirs trying to cross roads in the country. This is particularly significant, given the large number of tapirs (and other species) killed on Malaysia's road annually.

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In Malaysia, on the other hand, the artists were more conventional, with Tapir 2015 exhibiting art from the country's leading young artists.
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3rd-highest trending topic in the UK for much of 27 April! Who says tapirs are niche?
For much of the day, WTD was trending in the top three topics in the UK, eventually being seventh overall for 27 April 2015, having trended for over 5 1/2 hours - not bad going, by anyone's account.

Regular posts by the IUCN, the Malaysian Nature Society and Greenpeace were especially pleasing to see.

Globo and National Geographic (Brazil), Irish Examiner, the BBC and Metro (United Kingdom) and The Age (Australia) were some of the media outlets that covered World Tapir Day in various formats.

Perhaps the highlight of the day was the fantastic infographic from Peppermint Narwhal. By the time we'd made it out of bed early on the morning of 27 April in Australia, the image had already circulated widely across Twitter (so much so that we initially missed the source!).
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If you didn't know your tapirs beforehand, there are no excuses now!
2015 World Tapir Day events - a summary (links to be added)
Argentina
Zoo Córdoba

Australia
Adelaide Zoo

Belize
Belize Zoo

Brazil
Educação Ambiental - Parque das Aves, Foz do Iguaçu

France
CERZA

Germany
Dortmund Zoo

Honduras
Grupo Pro-Tapir, La Ceiba

Italy
Parco Natura Viva, Bussolengo

Japan
Chiba Zoological Park
Chikozan Park Zoo
Fukuoka City Zoo
Hirakawa Zoological Park
Hiroshima City Asa Zoological Park

Japan (cont.)
Ikeda Zoo
Kyoto City Zoo
Nihon Daira Zoo
Tobe Zoological Park
Ueno Zoo

Malaysia

PenangPAC - Tapir 2015 art exhibition
Pesta Pinji festival

Poland
Wroclaw Zoo

Taiwan
Taipei Zoo

United Kingdom
Belfast Zoo
Blackpool Zoo
Dudley Zoo
Flamingo Land
Howletts Wild Animal Park
Lake District Wildlife Park
Paradise Wildlife Park
Port Lympne Reserve

United States
Bergen County Zoo
Houston Zoo
San Antonio Zoo
Tampa's Lowry Park Zoo
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Happy World Tapir Day!

27/4/2015

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Another 27 April is here, which means that it's now World Tapir Day - the eighth WTD since its inception in 2008.

World Tapir Day is being celebrated at events in at least eleven countries in 2015. Ten Japanese zoos have hosted events to mark the occasion, as have zoos in other Asian countries, and across Europe, North America and Australia.  Particularly special is always the World Tapir Day celebration in Belize that coincides with the country's National Tapir Day at the Belize Zoo. There will be other events happening, some of which we'll learn about only after the fact.  Our Facebook page has the full list of events on it.

In Malaysia, the Department of Wildlife and National Parks, PERHILITAN, is running a campaign to draw attention to the problem of tapirs being killed on the country's highways:

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My personal highlight this year has been this wonderful infographic produced by Peppermint Narwhal Creative:
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Happy World Tapir Day everybody! We hope you are having a wonderful day.

-- Anthony.
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Tapir news: March 2015

31/3/2015

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With 2015 World Tapir Day just under four weeks away, it's time for another monthly update.  WTD Central (Melbourne, Australia) has been busy working on plans for the future of World Tapir Day, not to mention working many long hours in paid employment (much as it'd be lovely to spend all day working on tapir-related activities, it doesn't actually pay - and one of the central tenets of WTD is that all funds raised through its efforts are donated towards tapir conservation projects).

So, without any further ado, here's the latest monthly roundup of tapir news.

Tapir reports and news highlights: March 2015
Leading the way in tapir news this month was National Geographic's report on an albino Brazilian tapir that was photographed by a camera trap last year.  Photographer Luciano Candisani had heard reports of a local legend among the people living in a protected area of southeastern Brazil's Atlantic rain forest. They reported sightings of a pure-white tapir, so Candisani set up a camera trap in an attempt to photograph it.  His good fortune has been great publicity for the threats facing tapir habitat in South America.

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Malaysian newspaper the Sun Daily published an interesting opinion piece about Malayan tapirs, conservation efforts and the 'loan' of two pandas to the Malaysian Government by its Chinese counterpart.  It highlights the massive sums of money spent on ensuring the pandas' loans, and the relative lack of money and engagement in protecting Malaysia's own iconic black and white species. 

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ArtSemble Tapi Project (no typo) in Malaysia continues to produce tapirs in preparation for its exhibition at PenangPac to mark WTD this year, with a plan to tour the exhibition following this.

The central premise of the Tapi Project is to raise awareness about Malayan tapirs through visiting schools to conduct art workshops. ArtSemble members give a presentation about tapirs and another about contemporary art, before teaching the students how to sculpt tapirs with clay. These tapirs will form part of the art installation to be shown on World Tapir Day. They hope to have around 3,000 tapir sculptures in the installation to represent the number of Malayan tapirs remaining (which may indeed be slightly on the high side).  The Facebook page has photos of the workshops and education sessions that ArtSemble has been running recently, with a lot of little tapirs now very much in evidence.  We look forward to seeing the results soon!

Takepart.com is running an online poll to promote an upcoming Disney film.  Whilst the film itself doesn't hold a lot of appeal to this writer, the 'Rare & Ready to Be Saved' bracket game does as it includes the Malayan tapir as one of the endangered species.  Essentially a popularity contest, Tapirus indicus has made it into the final four animals and could do with your support to help it win.  It's possible to vote once daily for each stage of the knock-out, so show your love of the Malayan tapir with your vote!  Each vote also raises a small sum for Conservation International.

2015 World Tapir Day events
The WTD Facebook page is starting to amass the events that are being announced around the world to celebrate WTD this year.  If you know of an event that is happening - or you are organising one yourself - we'd love to hear from you, and we'll promote it to the wider community.  At the time of writing, there are a few events listed, but we're looking forward to being able to announce some others that we know of but aren't quite ready yet to promote.

Tapir births
It's been a slow couple of weeks and there haven't been recent tapir births around the world of late!

-- Anthony.
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Tapi Project - A Tapir Awareness Art Installation Project

2/2/2015

2 Comments

 
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Every now and again, we come across a tapir-related project or activity that makes us very happy.  The Tapi Project is the latest of these, and reminds us why World Tapir Day was founded originally.

Based in Malaysia, the Tapi Project is an initiative of the artist collective ArtSemble. It is a tapir awareness art installation project that will be exhibited at the Penang Performing Arts Centre for World Tapir Day, with a plan to tour the exhibition following this.

The central premise of the Tapi Project is to raise awareness about Malayan tapirs through visiting schools to conduct art workshops. ArtSemble members give a presentation about tapirs and another about contemporary art, before teaching the students how to sculpt tapirs with clay. These tapirs will form part of the art installation to be shown on World Tapir Day. They hope to have around 3,000 tapir sculptures in the installation to represent the number of Malayan tapirs remaining (which may indeed be slightly on the high side).

To help its efforts, ArtSemble has created a crowdfunding page to raise money to support its efforts. Supporters will receive a range of tapir-themed items, including t-shirts, key rings and sculptures.

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Children working on their tapir sculptures.
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Lots of interest in learning how to sculpt clay tapirs.
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Support the Tapi Project and receive an acknowledgement of your support.
Here at WTD HQ, we think that it's a brilliant idea, and one that really deserves to succeed. If you'd like to help support a tapir education project, this is a pretty good one to choose.

-- Anthony.
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