Do your holiday shopping and help nature

Here’s your chance to take care of your holiday shopping and help nature at the same time.

If you have friends, family, neighbors or co-workers who love nature and conservation, be sure to put the Endangered Wolf Center’s Holiday Boutique – which is Saturday, Dec. 6 – on your calendar. The Celeste Ruwwe Gift Shop will be open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. that day.

The Gift Shop has been stocked with hundreds of wolf- and nature-themed gifts. And all purchases go toward the Center’s vital mission of preserving endangered Mexican wolves and red wolves and returning them to the wild.

There will be a wide array of great gift items, including jewelry, T-shirts, hoodies, sweatshirts, jackets, posters, sculptures, wood carvings and plush animals. Holiday cards also will be sold. A pack of 12, with six different designs, costs $12.

Among the more unique gift creations are paintings done by two maned wolves who live at the Center and wire sculptures of African painted dogs made by villagers in Zimbabwe. The wire art is fashioned from snares, which poachers illegally use to capture game. The snares are a major threat to the existence of African painted dogs. Conservation agents confiscate them and give them to villagers in Zimbabwe, who turn them into sculptures. The Center purchases them and resell the sculptures in the Gift Shop, and proceeds go back to the villages in Africa, providing jobs for the locals.

Visitors to the Holiday Boutique on Dec. 6 can also take in special $10 mini-tours of the Endangered Wolf Center animal enclosures. Usually, visitors must make reservations for the daytime PredaTours and evening wolf howls. But on Dec. 6 only, no reservations are needed for a mini-tour.

Seven mini-tours will be offered on the hour, starting at 10 a.m. The last mini-tour will begin at 4 p.m.

Free refreshments will be offered to Holiday Boutique shoppers.

If you can’t make it to Holiday Boutique on Dec. 6, the Gift Shop is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. No reservations are required to visit the Gift Shop.

The Gift Shop is also open during daytime tours and evening events on weekends.

Other than Dec. 6, reservations are required for daytime PredaTours and evening Wolf Howls at the Center, and are easily obtained by calling 636-938-5900. Visit the Endangered Wolf Center website at www.endangeredwolfcenter.org for tour times, prices and information.