Light + Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
ZLI Campaigns amplify the work of The Zoological Lighting Institute as a focused public initiative.
Each ZLI Campaign highlights why the sciences of light and life are relevant for human well-being, while also developing related research, design guidance, educational outreach, and respectful media to engage audiences thooughtfully. Together, ZLI Campaigns help translate ZLI’s broader framework into practical and culturally meaningful forms. ZLI's Campaigns each tackle different issues, while embracing the importance of the ZLI Framework, the Arts, Animal Welfare, and Wildlife Conservation for all.
ZLI Campaigns each engage each of the ZLI Departments, embracing ZLI Endowment grant provision, ZALA data collection, AWASH husbandry/conservation protocols, and PhotoDiversity media outreach. A ZLI Campaign typically features a given ambassador animal, an SDG related issue, and most often, a specific regional pairing to facilitate real world engagement.
The campaigns therefore function as organized platforms for action.
Current ZLI Campaigns
Accommodation
ZLI's Accommodation Campaign features bats, while focusing on practical coexistence of 'indigenous and migrant' 'human and non-human' animals, related to the role of light in shelter, roosting, nesting, and habitat.
Accomodation applies globally, but has a particular interest to be active in the UK and Eastern Europe into India.
Activation
ZLI's Activation Campaign features sharks and rays, concentrating on the role of light in endocrine cycling and speficially related to sexual and reproductive function in human and non-human animals alike.
Activation applies globally, but has a particular interest to be active in Singapore and Hong Kong, as well as South Africa, while emphasizizng the importance of human (women's) rights.
Adaptation
ZLI's Adaptation Campaign features cetaceans such as whales and dolphins, concentrating on the well-studied evolutionary adaptations due to optical foraging depths. Taking on the challenges of occidental biases in science and animal welfare concerns,
Adaptation has a particular interest in functioning in Japan, the US, and New Zealand.
Bearanoia
ZLI's Bearanoia Campaign features bears, concentrating on the role of environmental factors such as light on behavioral, neurological, and hormone related mental states such as the euphoria of play or anxieties caused by bullying. With a fascination for baseball,
Bearanoia has a particular interest in functioning in Japan and the United States.
Insect Apocalypse
ZLI's Insect Apocalpse Campaign features insects such as bees, butterflies and ladybugs, with a particular interest in pollination and IPM community resourcing subjects related to the ZLI Framework, so as to underscore the importance of insects to human food security.
Insect Apocalypse has a particular interest in functioning across Japan and Italy, with an interest in the relation of ingredient sourcing inherent to these cuisines.
Monkey See
ZLI's Monkey See Campaign features primates to exlore the role of vision in learning, whether of task related training or 'personal' development on the order of the liberal arts.
Monkey See applies globally, but has a particular interest in heavy metal mining dependent countries such as Indonesia, Peru, and the DRC which bear the burden of resourcing technologies.
Otohime’s Time
ZLI's Otohime's Time Campaign features sea turtles, taking its name from the Japanese heritage tale, Urashima Taro. It focuses on the role of light in (human and non-human) aging and seasonality, stressing the importance of whole life contributions to animal welfare and wildlife conservatino work. Otohime's Time applied globally, but has a particular interest to be active in Japan and the Americas.
Save a Billion Birds
ZLI's Save a Billion Birds! Campaign features birds to explore questions of navigation and different modes of visual access. Concerned to improve nature access while preventing bird-glass collisions,
Save a Billion Birds! is particularly focused on improving conditions in the nothern hemisphere, including the US, UK, and Japan.
Synchronicity
ZLI's Synchronicity Campaign features fireflies to explore issues of light timing from cellular to ecological levels, with particular attention to light-driven rhythms and living organism interdependence.
Synchronicity applies globally, but is particularly interested in operating across the US, Japan, Malaysia, and Thailand.
How ZLI Campaigns Work
ZLI Campaigns are intended to support mission related development utilizing each of the four ZLI Departments, and by engaging corporate and nonprofit stakeholders pursuing related value proposition subjects.
ZLI Endowments
ZLI Campaigns help identify and organize research priorities relevant to specific taxa, habitats, or welfare challenges. Adaptation, for example, develops funding for ZLI Framework related cetacean research, while specifically supporting AAPI and First Nations researchers and the unique challenges posed to these communities regarding whale and dolphin welfare oriented conservation. Save a Billion Birds!, for its part, develops funding primarily for sensory ecology research related to the collision challenge, in a way intended to improve nature access for all.
ZALA Monitoring
ZLI Campaigns support data-driven science related to their specific featured species, incorporating monitoring techniques and metrics relevant to the luminous habitat, luminous ecology, and luminous environment of each. Such data is then made available for assessment and review within ZLI Endowment / ZLI Framework research projects, as well as for distribution to animal care and conservation organizations.
AWASH Design
ZLI Campaigns embrace practical solutions, whether in the creation of best practice husbandry manuals or implementation of conservation projects intended to improve animal welfare and ecological goals in the wild. The seminal AWASH initiative of the latter kind is ZLI's Little Birds Initative, which incentivizes bird-friendly design with tax deductions and creates the Bird-friendly Remediation Fund to reduce bird deaths due to this avoidable crisis.
PhotoDiversity Media
ZLI Campaigns each pursue a PhotoDiversity Media Suite to engage audiences and create the human resources necessary to achieve the ZLI Mission respectfully. Led by a foundational 'Inhumanities' anime series, PhotoDiversity Media Suites complement this with a live action cinema production, a live action science education series, a stop motion genre film, as well as a pre-K 'chibi' show based upon the foundational anime. Projects will be developed within the charity (allowing for content solidification and charitable tax support (tax deductions for donors, in addition to tax credits applied directly to production costs), and then sold / transferred to benefit ZLI as well as to attain maximal distribution potential.
Explore the Campaigns
Accommodation |
Activation |
Adaptation |
Bearanoia |
Insect Apocalypse |
Monkey See |
Otohime’s Time |
Save a Billion Birds! |
Synchronicity |
