FULTON, NY - “Each one of us can make a difference.”

That was the message videographer Bill Wallauer and photographer Kristin Mosher gave students at the Fulton Junior High School Monday afternoon.

Wallauer and Mosher visited the school to share some of their work. The two have done extensive work recording chimpanzees and their behaviors for the Jane Goodall Institution at the Gombe Research Station in Tanzania, North Africa.

Through photographs and video, the two showed the different behaviors, emotions, survival skills and interactions between chimpanzees. Wallauer was recently featured on Animal Planet’s “Almost Human” — a documentary with Jane Goodall about chimpanzees at the research station. The two have won numerous awards for their work.

“A chimp is not a monkey,” Wallauer said, noting that chimpanzees are primates. He explained that chimps are able to use tools as weapons or to gather food, play, show emotions, form bonds with each other and even throw tantrums. The pair encouraged participation from the students through various questions.

“It was very interesting,” 12-year-old Shanea Smith said. “I had no idea that chimpanzees had human emotions.”

“I thought it was really cool,” 12-year-old Jennifer Tucker added. “I didn’t know anything about chimpanzees before.”

Not all of the information brought smiles, however. Wallauer explained that chimps are in danger of becoming extinct.

Through logging, agricultural efforts and poaching, chimpanzee habitats are disappearing, Wallauer said.

“Chimps belong in the wild,” he said.

Mosher’s photograph of a chimpanzee catching termites, a photograph taken for National Geographic, was a first place award winner for the Best of Photo Journalism 2007 contest.

Stressing the importance of “chimp conservation,” he urged the students not to buy products that use chimpanzees in their advertising, noting the mistreatment and abuse that chimps are subject to during the filming of such ads. He noted, too, that 90 percent of chimpanzees that are collected in the wild die.

Wallauer explained that the only way to stop the problem is to become part of the solution. Regardless of age, Wallauer stressed that everyone can make a difference.

“Get involved in your community. Get involved in your world,” he said. “The world is not in very good shape right now. Get involved… and make the world a better place.”

After the presentation, Wallauer and Mosher said the whole point of their presentations is to encourage people of every age to get involved.

“One of the things we do is show people to think about the animals we share the planet with,” Wallauer said. He noted that chimpanzees are a significant because they are able to “blur the lines” between humans and animals because they have so many human characteristics.

“We encourage everyone to take some kind of role in making the world better,” Wallauer said. “It makes them think about it.

“Kids have inherited such a broken planet,” Wallauer added. “If these things are not instilled when they are young, it will be even more broken for the next generation.”

Mosher — a Fulton native — noted that junior high students are at an age when they feel that they don’t have control over many things in their world.

“It is important that these students see that they can contribute something,” Mosher said. “I think that is empowering. A lot of these kids don’t feel they have control. … If they get involved, it is not about helping another species, it is about helping themselves.”

By reaching a group of students together, Mosher noted that the positive affects can grow.

“In numbers, they may feel they can accomplish something that maybe on their own they may be too shy to do,” she said.

“We just feel so privileged to have been able to spend time in the wild and see these kinds of things,” Mosher added. “We feel that we have to do something to share what we’ve learned. The more who hear about it, the better.”

Oswego Harborfest has announced that the popular 50-50 Raffle to benefit Harborfest will return in 2009.

Farnham Family Services, an Oswego-based substance abuse treatment and prevention center, is now selling tickets for its 2009 Changing Lives Raffle.

As this column goes to press the 152nd Oswego County Fair should be in full swing at Sandy Creek. During the previous week the Heritage building was stocked full with many new and unique exhibits. We even brought down a piano for some live music!