As a child, Indigo attended summer camps and educational programs at zoos and aquariums. At the age of nine years old, Indigo made a conscious, personal life goal to build a world respected animal facility that would be arranged taxonomically, with the focus on species and subspecies that are rare in captivity, educating people about animals they never knew existed.

Most of Indigo’s knowledge about animals has been self-taught over his lifetime, through books, the Internet, documentaries, lectures, as well as personal conversations and correspondence with animal experts and professionals.

Indigo’s personal library consists of over 2,000 animal books, encyclopedias, textbooks, reference books, journals, magazines, and field guides (including 3 sets of both volumes of Walker’s Mammals of the World, the 3-Volume World’s Zoos, 5 volumes of the Grzimek’s Mammal encyclopedias, every volume of both editions of Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedias, every volume of both editions of the International Wildlife Encyclopedias and all of the, published Handbooks to Mammals of the World, as well as many out-of print and newly published books)

Since graduating high school, Indigo has been a member of AZA (American Association of Zoos & Aquariums) and has attended conferences and symposiums around the country. He continues to attend lectures at local institutions as often as possible.

Over the many years of continuous, pro-active study in the fields of zoology and paleontology, Indigo has logged over a decade of volunteerism with zoos and museums. Facilities at which Indigo has volunteered include Santa Ana Zoo at Prentice Park, Los Angeles Zoo & Botanical Gardens, Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History, San Bernardino County Museum, Western Science Center, Florida Museum of Natural History, Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and the Arizona Museum of Natural History. Indigo also has been involved with the Sumatra Camera Trap Project doing animal identification and sharing ideas, Indigo also worked with Aye Aye Conservation as their outreach coordinator.

Indigo has made over 1,000 verified and approved contributions to the well-respected, online biological library, www.biolib.cz and has made at least a dozen suggestions for additions to www.zootierliste.de (a German-based online database for the current and former vertebrate inventories of European zoos and other public collections).

In 2014, at 21 years old, Indigo was the youngest of 8 individuals from around the world (only 2 from the United States) invited by Dr. Jose Ramon Castello to contribute to his nearly 700-page field guide, “Bovids of the World: Antelopes, Gazelles, Cattle, Goats, Sheep and Relatives”, published by Princeton University Press (2016).

Indigo hạs freelanced as an English editor for four published scientific papers: “A new insight into the taxonomy and zoogeography of recent species of goral (Naemorhedus, Bovidae, Ruminantia)”, by Peter Hrabina; “Historical notes on Mediterranean monk seals (Monachus monachus) in Italian Zoos”, by Spartaco Gippoliti; “Conservation breeding programs and refined taxonomy as a political tool for biodiversity conservation: the DeBeaux’s and Durrell’s legacies”, by Spartaco Gippoliti, and “Evolutionary potential of endangered Ganges river dolphin in human modified South Asian waterways”, by Shambhu Paudel.

Indigo’s purpose in life has never wavered: “Finding a path to ensuring a healthy, sustainable natural world through the building of facilities dedicated to the conservation and propagation of endangered and threatened species and their habitats”.  He believes this can only be done through directly engaging human communities in this responsibility through education, their cooperation and their participation.

Biodiversity Institutes for Conservation and Education (BICE) is the outgrowth of this vision. BICE is a means for everyone, everywhere, to be actively involved in this important endeavor. BICE offers a next step in shifting human beings’ perception of the natural world as a source of entertainment and economic ends, to evolve to a respectful understanding of the natural world as the source of our very future existence.

Indigo Taylor-Noguera

Founder & CEO

Biodiversity Institutes for Conservation and Education