Carolina Wildlife Information and Science Education, or Carolina WISE, plans to bring reptiles and amphibians on campus to educate the local community about how to have safe encounters with wildlife.
“We think it is important for people to know about wildlife and how to act around them, especially if you come across an animal in your backyard,” said Nicole D’Avignon, president of Carolina WISE. “If you know how to act around them, you decrease the amount of injuries to you and the amount of injuries to them, and everyone seems safer and happier.”
D’Avignon is a first-year who started planning the organization before coming to UNC. She said she decided to start working on Carolina WISE after hearing about the Robert E. Bryan Fellowship, an APPLES Service-Learning program for projects that serve the community.
D’Avignon said she was inspired to start the group because of a similar program at Malone University in her home state of Ohio.
“I worked at the Columbus Zoo with one of the guys who started Malone’s program, so I talked to him, and I talked to their adviser and got to know what their program was and what it entailed, and then I decided to bring it here as well,” she said.
The organization plans to keep small reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates in a vacant laboratory on campus and take the animals to local elementary schools.
Members will either take care of the animals while accompanied by trained volunteers or educate elementary school students.
“It’s mostly for younger students,” D’Avignon said. “But once we are established, we plan on having programs for college students as well. We just want to make sure that we get our main program set up first before we expand.”
