History

How Did Niños y Crías Get Started?

Niños y Crías is Spanish for ‘Kids and Critters’, a name that arose from the sands of the Rio Lagartos Reserve of the Biosphere.

In order to give more continuity to the conservation projects and to strengthen the protection of that particular natural preserve, a group of specialists put together the Civil Association in 1999.  Their objective was to provide continuous support for the environmental education projects, including wild life conservation, rehabilitation of disturbed ecosystems and sustainable community development projects.

Nowadays, alliances with national and international organizations allows us to bring our message together with varied messages from other natural reserves from around Mexico.

The most notable alliance in which we participate is a project which prepares educators for nature conservation. It is called the Civil Association RARE, based out of Guadalajara University and affiliated with the National Commission for Protected Natural Areas.

Origin of our name
We always say how important it is to learn nature conservation at an early age, That is why we focus on a very important audience: the KIDS. Our conviction is based on the way that a native language is learned during a human being’s early years and never forgotten.

We believe that if environmental education is received at an early age, all those plants and animals, the CRITTERS, will grow in harmony with the KIDS.

KIDS are born with sensitivity to animals and the natural world. Unfortunately, they lose it as they grow. We teach lessons that encourage children to keep their  love of nature. We do it with songs, Puppet Theater, contests, videos and events in natural surroundings. The CRITTERS part of our name represents the baby animals and plants. They symbolize one of our principal goals: the preservation of biological diversity or biodiversity.

At the same time, the kids and the critters interact frequently in threatened habitats and environments. If we can sensitize and educate those who in the future will be responsible for the health of the planet, we will be forming human beings capable of acting on behalf of the environment.

In this, we will be fulfilling our mission that we work for every day:  “Learn to conserve nature”