Remembering Suzanne Davenport

As World Tapir Day approaches for 2018, we remember Suzanne Davenport, who passed away suddenly on 10 November 2017.

Suzanne was a longtime supporter of WTD, and probably the most active of supporters worldwide.  She brought flair along with her passion to her promotional and fundraising activities.  She first contacted WTD in 2011 to let us know about her busking activities in the New York subway with her group The Violin Femmes, and each subsequent year became more prolific in envisaging new ways to increase the profile of tapir conservation and how to fund it.

Her passion for tapirs stemmed from much earlier - from first seeing them at the Wilhelma Zoo in her native Germany in the early 1990s.  Last year she was  excited to learn that the zoo was just about to host its first tapirs for some years.

In 2017, Suzanne organised the second "Tapir Aid" concert in a bar in New York, at which tapir-themed songs were played, raffles were held, and t-shirts were sold.  Well over US$6,000 was raised to support Rainforest Trust projects in Peru and Tapir Specialist Group (TSG) activities.  In 2016, Suzanne raised in excess of US$4,000 to protect tapir habitat in Sumatra, Indonesia.  As soon as WTD 2017 was over, she was starting to explore new ideas for 2018, and was excited about each new concept she imagined, and shared them with  excitement and passion.

Her passing came as a shock to the people that she was looking forward to meeting at the seventh International Tapir Symposium in November 2017 in Houston.  She was looking forward to meeting the people who had supported her fundraising activities over the years, as well as the tapir researchers her activities had helped to fund.  She was both excited and nervous about having a fifteen-minute slot to talk about her fundraising activities, and to motivate them to follow her lead and create activities around the world to help protect tapirs.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of World Tapir Day, Suzanne was working on ideas to expand her activities to Germany through friends in Berlin, and involving bars and breweries in the United States and Germany for fundraising for tapir-related conservation causes.  In the weeks before her passing, she and I were in regular contact about how WTD could be promoted more effectively, and how she could be an even more prolific fundraiser.

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Her fundraising for Rainforest Trust saved almost 4,000 acres of rainforest to protect tapir habitats, not to mention her activities for the TSG and other groups.  We will miss Suzanne's enthusiasm for protecting tapirs, and the creativity she brought to her activities.  World Tapir Day is poorer for her passing.  She may have blamed us for making her passionate about tapir conservation, but the truth is that Suzanne's motivation and excitement for protecting tapirs left most of us looking pretty pale in comparison.  If you'd also like to remember her this WTD, a memorial fund is raising funds to support Houston Zoo's tapir conservation activities.

Anthony.