(upbeat music) - Good morning, Dustin.

- Good morning, Joy.

It's great to see you.

- It's always good to see you.

- It is a great day at the Little Rock Zoo and a great day to be on the Arkansas Diamond Express.

- Agree.

I agree completely.

- You know, Arkansas is such a beautiful place and I've been thinking about how beautiful it is but sometimes I see litter on the roadways, on trails and in parks.

- That's very upsetting.

- Do you ever see litter, Joy?

- I do and I don't like it at all.

- Not only is it upsetting and we don't like it, it's dangerous for wildlife.

- Do you think that there's anything that we can do about that, Dustin?

- You know, I think it's something we all have to do to keep our wildlife safe.

(upbeat music) - Hi, Otto, we were just talking about how our actions impact animals.

- A lot of times, animals mistake litter for food or they get trapped and tangled in it.

- That's terrible.

What are some things we can do?

- Well, when we're going grocery shopping, instead of using plastic shopping bags we could take our reusable shopping bags to the grocery store with us.

- I see and maybe using reusable straws instead of the plastic straws at restaurants.

That's a great idea.

What about using a reusable water bottle when we come to the zoo next time?

- That's a good idea.

I like all those ideas.

I think those are things we can do to help.

- What do you think, Otto?

(upbeat fun music) - Hey, Erin, how are ya?

- I'm great, Joy.

How are you?

- I'm doing fine.

Now I've heard you work with otters at the Little Rock Zoos and otters have a very special success story.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

- So here in the United States they are one of our biggest conservation success stories.

They were once nearly trapped to extinction and since have bounced back in a healthy population.

- [Joy] How did we make that transition?

- They cleaned up waterways and otters are an indicator species.

So they're very picky about where they're going to live.

They wanna live where water quality is at its highest and there's a healthy abundance of fish.

So cleaning up the water is integral to having a healthy population.

They enacted a lot of trapping regulations and laws because at one time otters were trapped heavily for their beautiful coat.

- I see, so the combination of cleaning up our water and lawmakers making laws that protected them, those two things together helped us bring the population of otters back.

I think that the story that we just heard about otters helps us know that everybody can play a role in taking care of the environment.

What do you think about that?

- I agree, we all have our part to play in conservation and small changes can have big impacts.

- I agree.

(upbeat music) We are on our way to see the penguins and I cannot wait.

(upbeat music continues) - One of the things I care the most about as a zookeeper is that people take care of the environment.

And that means here in our own backyards in Arkansas and all the way in Africa.

So these are African black-footed penguins and sadly this is an endangered species.

So their population is going down which means they're in trouble in the wild.

Some of the problems that they face are pollution and over-fishing.

So have you ever heard of the term 'leave no trace'?

- I have heard of that term and I think mostly when I think about it, I think of when I go camping but you have to take everything with you because all that little could end up in the waterways and it's just devastating to our wildlife.

- Exactly, so leave no trace basically means take care of the environment, leave it just like you found it and don't leave trash behind so that other animals and wildlife can really thrive in their own home environment.

So how you can help with the littering problem is don't litter.

Because even by just throwing trash on the ground in Arkansas, it can wind up in our waterways, it can wind up in our drains and it can even go all the way into the ocean.

And ocean plastic and pollution is a huge problem for all ocean animals.

And there are other things you can do at home like turning off the lights when you leave the room, that saves electricity, turning off the water when you brush your teeth to save water.

All of these little actions add up to save endangered animals like the African penguin and other animals in your own backyard.

- Everything you said seems pretty simple.

I think I can do some of those things myself.

- That's awesome.

All right, do you wanna see them swim?

- Uh yeah, I wanna see them swim.

- All right, here you go, guys.

- How cool is this?

(upbeat music) - Remember what Otto always says.

- Keep Arkansas beautiful!

- Yeah!

(upbeat music)