So the Wildlands Conservancy in its early and kind of organic growth was a recognition
by the founders that the wildlife and the wild places in California were under some
really serious threats. And after a lot of thought and many efforts, the conclusion was that the
way to save it was to share it. The Wildlands Conservancy has preserves all across the state
of California, Windwolves being one of them. The fact that it's 93,000 acres makes it the
largest non-profit nature preserve on the West Coast. Since 1998 we've had over 180,000 kids come
and participate in our education programs and learn from us and we're trying to open up public
visitation and education at many of our preserves. To quote Emily Dickinson for occupation this,
the spreading wide of narrow hands to gather paradise. And part of that gathering of paradise
is to open the experience of touching nature especially to children and in many cases at
risk to children.
Our Nature Festival is the biggest event of the year. The preserve has never in its history
hosted as many people as we hosted today. Our goal is to make sure that visitors have an
opportunity to learn about windwolves. We just want people to come out and experience the preserve,
experience the wildflowers, and the hikes and the tours that we're offering. Have a good time
outside. Everything we offer here is free so it's available for everyone to come and enjoy.
So we're doing this festival for the community. My name is Jana. I'm better known as Jana
Banana here and I just finished the children's hike and we had a wonderful time. Yeah definitely
a focus is for kids. We want kids to grow up feeling comfortable outside and so we try to give them
lots of opportunities to come up with their families and go on hikes for you know that are
focused for kids whether it's pond discovery or looking for bugs. What'd you do? You fish with a
stick or you fish forced it? The focus of this is to get some of the younger kids that can't hike as
far or they don't have a car seat to go and say our safari tour to get a little bit of what wind
wolves about and we're hoping that this will continue on later. They'll get a love for nature
and eventually come back and maybe get into science or nature or you know ecology and continue our
work here today. A lot of the folks that came out today had never been here before and to accommodate
for that we offer tours in Spanish. We offer different age ranges and we also offer different
opportunities that might be more applicable to different demographics.
Here in Windwolves Preserve we have 93,000 acres and what we try to do is that a lot of people come here
to enjoy nature and learn about the animals and all the plants that are important in this area.
This event here today is part of the excitement about Kern County. If you look at look at us
in Kern County we have more endangered species than any other county in the continental United
States. That's significant and so that justifies the existence of the whole Windwolves Preserve.
We're out here at this festival to promote some education of the rocks and fossils that are in
the area and their uses. As the spring it comes up out of the earth under the water and it just
keeps building and building and building. Our forefathers they used to do the same thing of
tracking why it was for survival. One day you never know you're doing hiking you get lost
you can retrace your way back by looking at your own tracks back.
Then here of course at Windwolves the outpouring of affection from the community here today as
exemplified in over 2,800 people coming out in one day.
Our education programs are truly thriving and we're definitely having plans to open up more
education at several of our other preserves. My favorite part about the whole experience
was looking through the binoculars and looking at all the different types of animals and plants
that there were in the preserve. It shows you how powerful that appreciation in the community is
and how powerful our connection is and we're just grateful to have the opportunity to offer
that experience for all of the citizens of California and of the world to touch nature
and to be a part of preserving California's great legacy.
Thank you.
