SEATTLE — Woodland Park Zoo’s Forest Explorers program was honored this week with a Significant Achievement Award, a first-ever education award for the zoo. The national honor by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) was awarded during AZA’s 73rd Annual Conference held in Albuquerque, N.M.

During the 1997-98 school year, Forest Explorers will serve more than 8,000 second-graders from public and private schools throughout King County. The program is designed to make environmental education accessible to and fun for all students, while providing educators with the tools to satisfy the Washington state environmental education mandate. One of the goals is to inspire the students to care about the forests of the world they have not experienced firsthand.

Through the use of an interactive, interdisciplinary curriculum prepared by zoo education staff, second-grade students study the temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest and tropical rain forests of Costa Rica in the classroom. Following the classroom component, they take an expense-paid field trip to Woodland Park Zoo where they tour the Tropical Rain Forest and Temperate Forest. Before touring the zoo, children take part in an interactive presentation which allows them to use their bodies to become elements of the forest, such as trees, bushes and decaying logs.

According to zoo Naturalist Margaret White, who coordinates the program, "The response by past participating teachers and students has been glowing." Eleven other zoos competed in the Education Category, including some of the best in the country, such as San Diego Wild Animal Park, National Zoological Park and Bronx Zoo/Wildlife Conservation Park. "This special award is further testimony to the achievement of Forest Explorers, because it’s our peers in the zoo world who are giving this recognition."

The second-grade program is funded wholly by corporations and donors. The following have contributed a combined $180,000 to support Forest Explorers: US Bank, The Paul G. Allen Charitable Foundation, Discuren Charitable Foundation, SAFECO Corporation, E.K. and Lillian F. Bishop Foundation, Glaser Foundation Inc., Piper Jaffray Companies, Norcliffe Foundation and six local Rotary Clubs.