Students in Stefanie Virgen’s Eighth Grade Career Explo: Intro to Conservation class at Washington Middle School recently were working on "Wildlife Management and Mammals of Missouri Stations."
After discussing the ties between forestry management and wildlife management, including wildlife management and how humans’ impact on wildlife affects carrying capacity, the students used time at different stations to analyze Missouri habitat components reflective of predators and prey relationships, and what adaptations the animals have developed that are unique to our state and their relationship to the habitat and their food sources.
Here are the station sheets with more information on what the students did at each station. The stations included emphasis on tying together tactile, visual, and auditory information gleaned through:
*Identification of mammal tracks, including matching casts of the tracks to field guides then sketching the tracks with close attention to detail and analyzing what the tracks reveal about the animal.
*Animal skulls analysis, including biological drawing and extrapolation of fine detail and observation when applied to physiological adaptations
*Fur-bearer partner research, discussion, questioning, and writing.
*Animal pelts, which students sketched, described, and identified then analyzed through the lens of physiological adaptations to habitat.
*Discussion of the importance of healthy, sustainable management for our wildlife and its ties to management of our forests (something the class worked on in the prior weeks).
“The underpinning of all our forestry and wildlife management in Missouri is through our conservation department, who also provided these specimens for the students,” Virgen said. “In the students' learning about wildlife management, I emphasize that by the 1860s, Missouri’s resources were heavily depleted due to unchecked hunting and logging, which led our citizens to intervene and vote on an amendment to the Missouri constitution guaranteeing oversight of our resources - the beginnings of one of the first conservation departments in the United States. Understanding the importance of conservation starts with learning about what was almost lost to us forever - and the benefits of healthy management for a sustainable future.”
Photos from the classroom project are below.
