The Fort Collins-based Rocky Mountain Raptor Program will team up with local tattoo parlor Claw and Talon for a fundraising event on Sunday, Oct. 11, suggesting that wildlife conservation and tattoos have more in common than you may think.
Rocky Mountain Raptor Program (RMRP) has worked since 1979 for the conservation of raptors, or birds of prey, on the Front Range. According to Lisa Winta, assistant director of RMRP, protection of raptors is some of the most important conservation work in Colorado.
“Raptors are top-of-the-line predators, in the web of life,” she says. “When things are going awry in our environment, the top-of-the-line predators are the first ones to show that. They are indicators of [the health of ] our environment.”
As keystone species, raptors inhabit a crucial space in Colorado’s ecosystem, regulating populations of animals like fish and small mammals — which is precisely what makes the work done by RMRP so important. If raptor species such as falcons, owls and eagles are lacking, the whole environment suffers. This is a driving motivation for Winta, in part because she attributes most of the injuries and deaths of raptors to the presence of humans and human infrastructure.
“The major threat are the interactions with the human structures within their world,” Winta says. “They might be hit by cars, or birds flying into glass windows, some sort of impact that causes general trauma could be causing bleeding, fractures or wounds.” As a result, RMRP devotes most of their resources to the rehabilitation of injured birds of prey, with the intention of eventually releasing healthy birds back into the wild. At any given time, the rehabilitation program treats up to 25-50 birds for a variety of injuries and sports an 80 percent rate of getting raptors back in the wild. The other 20 percent, birds deemed too injured or sick to be rehabilitated, are used to educate the general public — constituting a crucial part of what RMRP does to protect raptors from human harm.
Raptors also provide an excellent introduction to general environmental activism and education, according to Winta.
“The crux of our education is inspiring and educating people to look at the whole web of life,” she says. “If you lose one part of that, everything suffers. So raptors are our tool and our focus for educating in all of those aspects.”
In order to best protect Colorado’s birds of prey, Winta advocates for individual initiatives to reduce one’s carbon footprint and consumption of electricity, water and fossil fuels, which would make humans less dependent on natural resources that are vital to raptor habitat and the greater Colorado environment. Above all, Winta believes we need to share Colorado with birds of prey and generally “make sure that we’re not causing more harm than good.”
The fundraiser at Claw and Talon Tattoo will take place from noon-8 p.m., with tattoo artists providing specialized raptor-themed tattoos and RMRP volunteers bringing a live bird for public viewing from 1-5 p.m.
Over at Claw and Talon Tattoo, the decision to host an RMRP fundraiser was a no-brainer. The partnership with RMRP originated in part from the clear similarity between “Claw and Talon” and birds of prey, although the connection was a much deeper one, according to Claw and Talon cofounder Chelsea Pohl.
“We’ve always wanted to do community events that are specific to these types of organizations,” she says.
The desire to give back reflects Pohl’s personal belief that art, education and conservation are excellent ways to build community and a shared experience. In addition to her work at the tattoo parlor, which she co-owns with her husband, Pohl also runs Locheart Arts, an art and education program for children.
“Artwork is one of the big ways we can address problems in our community,” she says. “I think a lot of people appreciate the opportunity to be able to get artwork or participate in artwork as a way to connect with our community.”
Pohl also believes that any kind of artwork brings people together, even tattooing.
“Tattoo artists are doing this type of thing where they are giving back to their community through things like fundraisers, and I think that’s so awesome,” she says. “It really changes the paradigm about the image that tattoo artists and tattoo parlors have.”
Like RMRP, Pohl advocates for a broad, community-based conservation to preserve and protect Colorado’s natural areas and wildlife, emphasizing the shared responsibility that humans have to ensure the health of the environment, as well as the health of our human communities.
“I care very much about our environment and the animals that inhabit it, and I also care a lot about community,” Pohl says. “Any problem that exists in our community is our shared responsibility to address.”
