When Chris Evers was a boy, he discovered a vernal pool in his parents”™ backyard in Darien and “there I found paradise.” For him, paradise consisted of splashing around in the shallow, rainwater-fed pool and visiting with tadpoles and frogs and turtles and ducks that spent spring there. As he grew older and bolder, he discovered the stream leading from the seasonal pool stretched through a neighborhood woods and, when he was even older, discovered it eventually led to a salt marsh and Long Island Sound about a mile from his home.
“That”™s where I started making connections, even as a kid,” Evers said of his early explorations. “My pool had a stream that left it, and the stream wound up in Long Island Sound. It wasn”™t until later in life that I was able to put terms to what I saw.”
Now Evers is helping school children make the same discoveries and connections and putting terms on them, only on a grander scale. “This past Friday I did an endangered species program for the Riverside Elementary School in Greenwich,” he said of his Life on the Edge educational program. “I brought a variety of animals that are endangered or are on the road to being endangered,” including a Vietnamese tree frog, a chinchilla from the Andes, a tortoise from Columbia and a blue-and-gold macaw. Most impressive, however, was a wolf. “I have a relationship with the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, N.Y., so they brought an Artic wolf.”
But Evers aims to do more than put interesting animals on display for school children. “The program is to get kids to understand why the animals are endangered and what we can do to make a difference.”
Evers runs his educational programs out of his five-year-old Stamford business, Animal Embassy, which is dedicated to rescuing and adopting exotic animals such as pythons, monitor lizards, and those chinchillas and the macaw he brought to Riverside. “We have 100 different animals that come from people who want to have an exotic pet and then realize for one reason or another that they”™ve made a mistake, or that the animal isn”™t appropriate.”
Evers began collecting those inappropriate exotic animals when he was 17 and rescued a six-foot Burmese python from a New Rochelle, N.Y., couple who “had the good sense and compassion to call many different places” to find a home for the snake. “They called the Stamford Museum, and they called me, and the python came and lived at my parents”™ home,” he said. “My parents were very tolerant.”
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The python tagged along when Evers attended college ”“ where “I had quite a collection of unwanted animals, including an iguana, alligators and hedgehogs” ”“ and spent time in Alaska, lived at the Stamford Museum for a period of time, and spent some time on display at the Darien Nature Center. “She just died last year,” Evers said of the then 12-foot-long python.
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Enrichment programs
Evers spent most of his adult life traveling and working for environmental organizations from Montana to Alaska to Norwalk and Stamford. After earning a degree in natural resources from the University of Maine, he worked a summer at Katmi National Park in Alaska as a fishing and ecology tour guide, did some contract work at the Stamford Museum and the Darien Nature Center, volunteered at the Vermont Institute of Natural Science and worked part time at the Billings Farm and Museum in Vermont, then moved back to Connecticut, where he was an educator at the Maritime Aquarium and, later, joined SoundWaters in Stamford before starting his for-profit business.
“I worked for many nonprofits and dealt with a lot of frustration at the disconnect between the board and the staff, who did the actual work,” he said. Those staff members “were incredibly dedicated, but came and went because there are not many fulltime positions available, especially in education.”
At first, Evers ran Animal Embassy out of his parents”™ home until “the business grew and I was feeling stable with the income.” He moved to a rented house in Stamford, where three rooms of the home are dedicated to housing exotic animals. Other animals are housed at the Stamford Museum and at school-year exhibits at three Stamford schools.
“When I started Animal Embassy, I didn”™t need much in the way of financing because of the educational programs I had come up with,” he said. Those enrichment programs bring Evers into the classroom six days a week and, now, a full-time educator he has hired is teaching five days a week as well. The school-year contracts run between $20,000 and $30,000 and have helped him hire a full- and part-time staff of five to help run the business.
He provides enrichment programs at schools in Darien, Greenwich, Stamford and other communities, for public library programs and at nature centers and museums. “We have weeks where we”™re doing more than 40 programs a week,” he said. Audience sizes can range from a typical classroom where Evers uses smaller animals to school auditoriums with a couple of hundred students where he uses larger animals. Programs are “hands-on, when appropriate,” he said. “Some animals can be touched, some can”™t.”
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Ultimate goals
Evers still retains his teenage passion for rescuing exotic animals. “I”™m passionate and compassionate for wildlife,” he said. “I”™ve seen animals people have bought and then released into the wild because they were sick or dying. The mission in all the places I worked for was not to rescue exotic animals.”
The animals Evers rescues are legal to own ”“ he is licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to exhibit the animals in an educational setting ”“ and were purchased at pet shops. “People have no idea what to do with them” once they realize their mistake. Pet shops won”™t take them back, he said, “and people end up calling as many places as they can think of, including local environmental organizations and animal control.” Many organizations tell the animal owner to contact Evers, and “if I can take the animal, I will. If we don”™t have the room, I try my best to help people find a place.”
As for the future of Animal Embassy, “I want to be creative about how to proceed, because my goal is to reach as many people as I possibly can. I”™ve always seen television as a great way to do that. In can only see so many people face to face, but with television, it”™s unlimited.”
Evers has appeared on some local cable TV programs, and is beginning to investigate the possibility of creating his own program. He has traveled the world, from Central America to India ”“ where he charmed a cobra ”“ to Africa, where he connected with the Endangered Wildlife Trust in New Canaan. “One part of Animal Embassy is giving a home to unwanted exotic animals, but that”™s a small part of what we do,” he said. “My intention is to connect people with wildlife and the environment, to help them appreciate it so they”™ll protect it. That”™s the ultimate goal of my business and my personal goal.”
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