About Me

  Since I was a child, I always loved animals. I grew up around them and always wanted to pursue a career as a wildlife biologist. In order to follow my dream, I studied Biology/Ecology and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The summer after graduating, I worked for the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management in Northern California.

   I came to Maui in the Fall of 2014 as a Americorp Kupu intern to work with the Maui Nui Seabird Recovery Project. I instantly fell in love with the project and the seabirds, I was ecstatic when I got hired on full time with the Seabird Recovery Project as a Field Biologist in 2015.

      

  I did a lot of outreach events at the seabird colonies. The main birds we worked with were the 'Ua'u Kani or Wedge-tailed Shearwaters. These birds can dive 200 ft underwater and sleep and fly at the same time, but they burrow on the beach. We had a bunch of people who would see these burrows and thought they were dug by rats and mongoose. They would put trash inside them or even collapse the burrows. However once I told them that they were dug by native seabirds, they got really excited and wanted to help protect them.

That's when I realized that people want to help, but they cannot protect what they do not know exists. I started Advance Wildlife Education LLC in May 2016. I wanted to do more to help so I combined my passions for wildlife and art in order to form a bridge between the community and conservation nonprofits by creating these wildlife educational coloring books. 

Hawaiʻi is the extinction capital of the world – here we have more endangered species per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Thank you so much for supporting native Hawaiian species and the people who are determined to protect them! You are helping invest in a brighter tomorrow for these endangered animals.

 

-Che

 Contact: Che@advancewildlife.org