WASHINGTON — Five of the 10 cheetah cubs recently born at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute are about to get names, and you can help pick them.
In celebration of this year’s Earth Day (which is Sunday) and the Smithsonian Institution’s Earth Optimism Summit (April 21–23), three females and two males at the Front Royal, Virginia, facility will be named after groundbreaking conservationists.
The female name finalists include:
- Carson (for American marine biologist and conservationist Rachel Carson)
- Fossey (for primatologist and zoologist Dian Fossey)
- Goodall (for the world’s leading primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall)
- Hunter (for environmentalist and conservationist Celia Hunter)
- Maathai (for Wangari Maathai, an environmental political activist and the first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize)
- Murie (for American naturalist Margaret Murie)
The male name finalists include:
- Leopold (for environmentalist and writer Aldo Leopold)
- Muir (for conservationist and naturalist John Muir)
- Roosevelt (for President Theodore Roosevelt, who created the United States Forest Service)
- Thoreau (for American writer Henry David Thoreau, whose works celebrate nature)
The good people at CBS News are handling the electoral duties. Online polls are open for voting until early Saturday morning (2:59 a.m. EST, to be exact).
As they say in Chicago, “Vote early, vote often.”
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