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Vet student Gabby Wagner is using high fashion to attract attention and raise funds to save endangered species.

Vet College student Gabby Wagner '11 isn't waiting until graduation to make a difference.

She has already traveled the globe under her pseudonym, Gabby Wild, to raise awareness for the plight of domestic and exotic animals. Now she's created the Gabby Wild Foundation to launch a yearlong campaign to use the lure of high fashion to draw attention and financial support to some of the planet's most threatened species.

"The '12 in 12 for 12' campaign is about celebrating and preserving beauty -- the artistic beauty of fashion innovation and the natural beauty of some of nature's most incredible designs," said Wagner, who double majored at Cornell in animal science and biological sciences. "We're all drawn to beauty, but unless we can find new ways to make people see the treasures we're losing all around us in nature, too many will very soon be gone forever.

"It's a cause I've always believed in, and it's my dream to give fashion this mission as well," said Wagner, who will also be featured at the Fashion Fights Poverty Seventh Annual Fashion Gala in Arlington Va., March 31.

The campaign's goal is to raise at least $10,000 each month for wildlife conservation efforts by highlighting a series of custom-designed outfits assembled by up-and-coming designers, each inspired by its own threatened species. The series kicked off in January with a focus on the Amur leopard, an extremely rare big cat from far eastern Russia, and an outfit by "Project Runway" season six finalist and New York city-based designer Althea Harper.

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"The '12 in 12 for 12' campaign is about celebrating and preserving beauty," says Wagner.

Later outfits are being developed by other "Project Runway" alumni, professional designers and in Cornell's Department of Fiber Science & Apparel Design.

Wagner, a full-time student on leave from Cornell's College of Veterinary Medicine, will help raise awareness by wearing each of the featured outfit combinations for a month. The attention the campaign draws will help Wagner raise money to support conservation efforts through direct contributions made through her website, http://www.gabbywild.com. The site will also feature the direct sale of wildlife-themed fashion merchandise designed exclusively for the campaign. The dresses will be auctioned online when the 12-month campaign closes in December.

All contributions and proceeds from these efforts will go directly to Wagner's core set of conservation partners, to date including:

• the Zoological Society of London, a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats;
• the Red Wolf Coalition, which coordinates private support for long-term red wolf restoration in the eastern United States;
• EDGE of Existence, the only global conservation initiative to focus specifically on threatened species that represent a significant amount of unique evolutionary history;
• the Ya'axché Conservation Trust, a community-oriented organization that advances sustainable land use management and supports socially innovative and economically viable enterprises in southern Belize; and
• Kakapo Recovery, which monitors the last 131 kakapos, a flightless parrot native to the islands off New Zealand.

Other animals to be featured in the campaign are the Asian elephant, Bactrian camel, blue morpho butterfly, Ganges River dolphin, Chinese giant salamander, kakapo parrot, purple frog, red panda, red wolf, rondo dwarf galago and the Sumatran tiger.