Fashionable Lesson on Endangered Species

An exotic collection of fashion accessories on display at the Los Angeles Zoo on Wednesday looked as though they came straight from the upscale fashion houses of Paris.

Carefully arrayed on a conference table in the zoo’s education building were turtle-skin boots, cayman hide shoulder bags and ivory jewelry.

But this was no ordinary fashion show.

The items on display--all illegally made from endangered species--were actually seized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service when overseas travelers tried to bring them into the country, said Barbara Taylor Beggs, director of the Student CITES Project, a high school-level endangered species awareness program.

Beggs brought the items to the zoo to show them to about 30 sophomores from the North Hollywood High School Zoo Magnet Program who are participating in the project.

The student program is a spinoff of the larger CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) project, which is an international treaty administered by the United Nations Environment Programme.

The impetus behind the CITES treaty is to end the illegal poaching and sale of items made from endangered animals, plants and minerals, Beggs said.

The North Hollywood students will join other high schools students from New York, Chicago, New Orleans and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to serve as “wildlife ambassadors” who will teach middle school students about endangered species, Beggs said.

In June, one student from each of the five cities will go to Zimbabwe to attend the 10th annual CITES conference, Beggs said.

On Wednesday, the students devised ways on how best to present information about endangered species to younger students.

At one point, the students acted out a skit depicting a wildlife official questioning a female tourist wearing a leopard-skin and cayman shoulder bag.

The play took on a unique twist when Arsen Rabinovich, 16, spoofed the role of the woman traveler by donning a feather boa and a straw hat.

Unruffled by Arsen’s antics, Beggs said humor often gets the message across better than dry facts.