Zoo internquest is a seven-week career exploration program for San Diego County high school juniors and seniors. Students have the unique opportunity to meet professionals working for the San Diego Zoo, Safari Park, and Institute for Conservation Research, learn about their jobs, and then blog about their experience online. Follow their adventures here on the Zoo’s website! For our first week as interns, we met Colleen Bowman. Ms. Bowman is an Educator at the Zoo. More specifically we learned all about her trip to Uzbekistan. Ms. Bowman traveled to Uzbekistan on behalf of the critically endangered Saiga antelope. Saiga were once native to Uzbekistan. However, through poaching and other human-based threats, their populations have dwindled. However, even though saiga are rare they are still widely popular throughout Uzbekistan. In fact, saiga are so popular that Uzbekistan has an entire day dedicated to the species. This year for Saiga Day, students at a local school put on a puppet show all about the saiga, and even created games based on saiga. What happened to the saiga?  Why did they suddenly start to decline? Unfortunately, saiga were poached for their meat as well as for their horns. Although there is no scientific data backing this claim, it is believed that their horns contain medicinal properties. In addition to poaching, in 2015, scientist noticed a big decline in saiga due to a disease that wiped out over ⅔ of the population. In a period of 2 weeks, 100,000 saiga were found dead. Ms. Bowman then traveled to Uzbekistan to lead a teacher workshop. The goal was to teach them about saiga and to find effective way to inspire students to protect and conserve this critically endangered species. Ms. Bowman even created an interactive booklet on saiga and saiga conservation, which would later be translated in Russian, Uzbekistan’s primary language. Ms. Bowman really enjoys her job, and loves when she gets the opportunity to work hands on with animals. Growing up, Ms. Bowman wanted to be a dolphin trainer. With this goal in mind, she attended Texas A&M majoring in Marine Biology. After college, she landed a job at SeaWorld in San Antonio, TX working with the animal ambassador team. Since this job was seasonal, Ms. Bowman began training primates. Although she enjoyed working with primates, she missed interacting with people. She then realized her passion in education, Ms. Bowman was hired as an Educator at the San Diego Zoo. Ms. Bowman told us that even though it may seem like a lot of work, it’ll all be worth it in the end. She said you should keep an open mind and always take those classes that seem interesting even if you think they have nothing to do with your major. Since she likes to take new opportunities, she is currently working towards a masters in conservation education. Andrea, Monarch Blog Week One, Fall Session 2017