86. The Dalton Wildlife Club

The Dalton Wildlife Club motto is “Conserve, Educate, Respect.” Since 2011, club members have conducted campaigns with long-term environmental partners. Each year brings a new programs, trips, and fundraising efforts. Club sections function as a meritocracy, with leadership earned through involvement and sweat equity, which fosters engagement.

The  Dalton Wildlife Club began in the Middle School in 2011, and has been burgeoning ever since. It was founded by Kai Victor ’17 and Daniel Wing ’17. Callie Aboaf ’17 later joined to set the gold standard for club leadership.

The club’s motto is “Conserve, Educate, Respect.” We do our best to live by that credo, putting service and education first. Campaigns are conducted cooperatively with long-term partners including Panthera, the Wildlife Conservation Society, the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, South Africa’s Wessa Eco-Schools, and the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. Our achievements are wide-ranging: for example, coloring books produced by the club have been used in South African schools. Each year brings a new constellation of educational campaigns, trips, assemblies, and fundraising.

There are now four sections of the club, making Wildlife the only club operating across all three divisions at Dalton. Each section meets once a week and a total of about 50 students work school-wide for wildlife and wilderness causes. The various sections often work together. For example, the HS club and FP club lead annual FP wildlife assemblies and campaigns. Each club section is a meritocracy, with leadership earned through involvement and sweat equity, which fosters universal engagement. The synergies that result from such an open system are powerful, with students of all ages freely communicating and pitching in to help each other. In Wildlife Club, we look forward to extending the range and depth of our contributions to wildlife conservation in the years to come.
—Malcolm Fenton, Ph.D, Science Teacher and Wildlife Club Advisor