{"id":365786,"date":"2022-04-06T06:06:26","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T20:06:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=365786"},"modified":"2022-04-06T06:06:26","modified_gmt":"2022-04-05T20:06:26","slug":"conservation-is-the-big-picture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/conservation-is-the-big-picture\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservation is the big picture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The following is the winning essay in the Retta Sue Hamilton Scholarship Essay Competition.<\/em><\/p>\n

I remember once I chose a college, I had the same conversation with my friends, over and over: <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going where?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNYUAD.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York University Abu Dhabi.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201c…?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey have this really great biology program, plus it\u2019ll give me a chance to learn from an international perspective. See the world, you know?\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201c…Well good luck I guess.\u201d <\/p>\n

I know I made a somewhat unorthodox decision when I chose to leave home and go halfway across the world. Even though I miss my island terribly, I intend to push my boundaries and study the environment from a global perspective. I want to be a conservation biologist and protect the Marianas\u2019 crucial natural resources from destruction. It\u2019s important to me that I learn to see the big picture because conservation is the big picture. It goes beyond any single country or individual. I believe that we, as human beings, have a responsibility to our planet and I want to be able to protect it. Petty partisan squabbles seem outright ridiculous when compared to the extinction of indigenous species. Every living being on this planet is part of a delicate lattice of interconnections forming our biosphere. What happens all the way [in] the U.S. mainland can have substantial effects on our islands. So I thought, why not go abroad and get an outside perspective? <\/p>\n

You might think I sound naive or melodramatic, going on about \u201csaving the planet.\u201d Make no mistake, I know protecting our islands will not be easy. I don\u2019t have to imagine the amount of work it\u2019s going to take. I\u2019ve lived it. I\u2019ve seen our vibrant coral reefs, those unique rainbow homes for local fish species, those stoic protectors of our shores during storms, reduced to bleached and crumbling skeletons seemingly overnight. I\u2019ve seen our \u201cSave Pagan\u201d stickers plastered across the island as we fought to the last breath to protect habitat and heritage alike in the Northern Islands. Twenty years ago, Tanapag, my own village, had been suffering the effects of PCB chemicals from the transformer canisters the military had left behind. My home was toxic. I know exactly how difficult conservation work is, that\u2019s exactly why I want to do this. It\u2019s not starry-eyed optimism; it is grim determination. <\/p>\n

Here, I\u2019m studying to protect our oceans from rising temperatures, acidification, and yes, humans. I believe that the work we do to safeguard our islands and conserve the natural environment matters, not just for ourselves but for our descendants. I love my island, I miss it every day, but I know that everything I learn here is going to help me protect my home. Our descendants deserve the beauty and the bounty of i tano\u2019 yan i tasi. <\/p>\n

Samantha Liske-Clark (Special to the Saipan Tribune)<\/strong>
\nSamantha Liske-Clark is currently a freshman studying at New York University Abu Dhabi. She strongly believes in conservation and hopes to use her Biology degree to protect vulnerable species. When she\u2019s not studying, she enjoys travel, and reading sci-fi.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Editor\u2019s Note: The following is the winning essay in the Retta Sue Hamilton Scholarship Essay…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":331237,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[122],"class_list":["post-365786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=365786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/365786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/331237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=365786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=365786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=365786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}