Conservationist inspires artists and scientists to work together

            She’s worked as a wildlife veterinarian, directed the National Zoo, testified before Congress, appeared in a 13-part television series, and led an effort to care for wild mountain gorillas in Africa. But Lucy Spelman isn’t satisfied that she has done enough to get people to care about protecting wildlife.

So the Barrington resident is encouraging artists and scientists to work together to inspire conservation action by founding the non-profit organization Creature Conserve. A part-time lecturer at the Rhode Island School of Design and a full-time exotic animal veterinarian at Ocean State Veterinary Specialists, she is helping local and international artists

Lucy Spelman speaking at TEDx Providence

learn from scientists – at workshops and in the field – about the issues facing wildlife and what can be done to help.

“I was teaching my first course at RISD, called the biology of human/animal interactions, and at the end of one class I saw a student’s doodle about what I had just talked about, and realized that she had just distilled my entire lecture into a single image,” said Spelman, who also chairs the board of the Rhode Island Wildlife Rehabilitators Association. “She actively listened to what I was saying and picked up on the science that interested her and made it visual.”

That doodle convinced Spelman to change the final requirement of the course from a paper and a presentation to a paper and a work of art. Students choose an endangered species, study the relevant science, and learn about conservation options. After three years of collecting photos of these final art projects, she had several folders full of art that she wanted to share with the world.

“Then, in the course of preparing a TEDx talk in Providence, I realized that what I really wanted to do next was encourage more artists to get involved in conservation, to help them raise their science literacy, so their art would be more powerful, have more punch, and so it would help more people see that the solutions for endangered species exist, and that it is up to us to take responsibility for them and take action,” she said.

So Spelman started Creature Conserve to bring artists and scientists together to save species. Today, she links artists with scientists, hosts workshops at which scientists inform artists about wildlife issues, and raises funds to send artists on field trips with scientists to Africa and South America.

“I know that artists think very similarly to scientists,” she said. “We both ask why are we here, what’s happening, we make something – art or science – to interpret the situation, and we share it with our peers.

“The difference,” she added, “is that scientists communicate in a technical language and to a fairly narrow audience. Art is a universal language, and artists reach a much broader audience. I’m interested in connecting art and science so we share what is happening with animals and what we can do about it with everybody. And in this way, we’re trying to change the way we problem-solve around conservation.”

Spelman took a rapid, round-about route to reaching this point in her career. She earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Brown University and a veterinary degree at the

'Electrical Box Landscapes' by Sophy Tuttle

University of California at Davis. Along the way she studied animal pathology at the San Diego Zoo, cared for retired animals used in entertainment in Los Angeles, and learned about animals used in laboratory research at the now-closed New England Primate Center. By 1995, she was the youngest person to be a board-certified zoological medicine veterinarian and was hired as an associate veterinarian at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. Five years later she was in charge of the whole zoo.

“Perhaps the most important thing I learned from my time at the National Zoo is that it is easier to feel immediately responsible for the creature in front of you than to an animal in the so-called wild that you may never see,” she said. “I also learned that nothing is truly wild. Humans have touched all parts of the Earth.”

After leaving the National Zoo, she found herself caring for wild mountain gorillas in the Congo, Uganda and Rwanda as the regional veterinary manager of the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project.
            “These are wild gorillas, not zoo gorillas, so we only intervened if there was a problem caused by humans,” Spelman said. “It was a triage job. We checked on the gorillas daily. We also supported initiatives to help local farmers and human health clinics. Over the course of three years, we did 16 interventions to remove snares or treat them for respiratory illnesses while I was there, and we documented for the first time that human visitors to the gorillas can transmit viral diseases.”

 When her stint in Africa was over, she returned to Rhode Island to teach and, eventually, to launch Creature Conserve.

“The organization is all about planting seeds among artists and scientists,” she said. “I can’t tell you what animals to protect. You have to be informed, and if you’re not interested, you’re not going to act. The art is a way of engagement, and it’s more powerful than anything.”

This article first appeared on EcoRI.org on March 29, 2020.