Prisoners Find Purpose Behind Bars: Saving Salamanders, Butterflies, and Frogs

[Omaha Steve]

Zoos need help with captive breeding programs. Prisons have a lot of people with a lot of time on their hands. It's the most unlikely match in wildlife conservation.

March 12, 2015 By Nancy Averett

Nancy Averett is a freelance journalist who enjoys writing about science, social issues, and athletes. Her work has appeared in Audubon, Pacific Standard, and Inc.


http://www.takepart.com/feature/2015/03/13/raising-endangered-species-in-prison?cmpid=tpfeature-eml-2015-03-15-salamander

Robert Cooper scoops a salamander from one of the six fish tanks he keeps in a small, unadorned room, its walls just bare cinder block. “This is my big boy,” he says, projecting his voice above the gurgling water. Cooper stretches his heavily tattooed arms and hands out before him—the words “hate” and “rage” are spelled across his knuckles—to reveal the tiny, slippery amphibian twisting in his cupped palms. “He ain’t too happy right now,” he adds. The salamander, an eastern hellbender, is a reclusive species that rarely interacts with its own kind, let alone humans.


Hydroponic herb garden at at Marion Correctional
Institution. (Photo: Duane Prokop)


Cooper knows what it feels like to be confined in someone else’s grip. He’s been a prisoner here at Marion Correctional Institution, in central Ohio, for 15 years. The hellbender he holds and the 11 others in the room are an endangered species endemic to parts of the Midwest, the South, and the Northeast. In six months, they will be released into the wild as part of the Ohio Hellbender Partnership, a consortium of zoos, universities, and government agencies collaborating to help the amphibian’s recovery. There is no certain date for Cooper’s release, however. He murdered a woman 15 years ago, when he was 21, and is serving a sentence of 27 years to life.

Five years ago, to keep busy and give himself a sense of purpose while doing his time, Cooper joined several other men at the prison to start an organization they named Green Initiative. The original project was to start a garden on prison grounds so the men could be outside more, fill their days productively, and have fresher food available to them and their fellow prisoners. The men now grow crops on an acre and a half of land; last year they gave away 15,000 pounds of vegetables to the Salvation Army and local churches and community programs. Green Initiative also raises bees and has built a greenhouse to grow hydroponic herbs and raise tilapia in an aquaponic system. It started the prison’s first recycling program, diverting more than a million pounds of garbage from landfills in 2013 alone.

Cooper and his friends’ efforts eventually helped convince officials at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction that it should join the Sustainability in Prisons Program, a nationwide network that formed in 2012 and that includes five states and three counties in California. SPP officials say another 20 states and 10 countries have since contacted them about starting programs, which appeal to prison officials because they can lower costs. Prisons are notoriously wasteful. Many buildings are old and leaky, making them inefficient to heat and cool, and staff and prisoners have little incentive to recycle.

FULL story at link.

[jwirr]

1. This is great. I like programs like this that more prisons are trying. The prisoners are part of the

world and not just hidden away. They are contributing.

[mopinko]

3. being with animals is very healing. gardening, too.

touching life. it can bring you back from the dead. i swear.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

4. ....

yes.

[mopinko]

2. omg is that a great story.

this is how you should employ prisoners.

[BrotherIvan]

5. Absolutely agree with both of your posts

This is rehabilitation! He murdered a woman and so he must serve time, which is not in dispute. But teaching a prisoner another way to interact with the world plus life skills is far more valuable that slave labor.

[daleanime]

6. It's nice, but it would be better......

if we simply didn't have so many prisoners.

[Liberal_in_LA]

7. k&r