Many people don't realize that... even using flint-tipped spears and arrows over the past 15,000 years, early Paleo hunters over-harvested many North American big game species to the point of extinction. If you were to see these giants still roaming our landscape you would be in awe. Imagine for a moment all of these giant species that were hunted to extinction by the first primitive hunters to reach North America. Most were hunted to extinction about 3000 years after the arrival of Paleo hunters in North America (11,000 to 12,000 years ago). Research has revealed a similar pattern on continents and islands around the world of many mega-fauna hunted to extinction within 2000 to 3000 years after the of the arrival of humans.
Of course when European settlers arrived in America, there had no idea that so many species, that must have seemed endless to Paleo hunters, had been hunted to extinction. So they didn't have either the history or foresight to imagine that shooting America's wildlife could devastate their populations. For instance the passenger pigeon once numbered 3 to 5 billion at their population peak and darkened the sky. It seems impossible that unregulated market hunting combined with human changes to the landscape could impact a wildlife population that size. Yet someone shot the last wild bird in 1901 and the sole survivor died in the Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. From billions to extinction in less than 100 years.
The American bison once blacken the American plains. When Lewis and Clack explored the west, an estimated 60 million bison roamed the plains and foothills. But the combination of market hunting and slaughter by the Army reduced the bison almost to the point of extinction by the late 1800’s.
Fortunately, the movement to preserve and protect America's wildlife, wild lands, and other natural resources occurred between 1890-1920. The conservation movement affected government policy that lead to landmark legislation that established Yellowstone National Park in 1872, Yosemite National Park in 1890, and the creation of the National Park Service in 1916. In 1901, conservationist, outdoorsman and sportsman Theodore Roosevelt became President of the United States. With other conservation voices such as John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, parks and wildlife refuges began being established across the nation. Today there are now over 560 National Wildlife refuges in the U.S. And perhaps more importantly, states across the nation began regulating hunting season and harvest numbers based on wildlife conservation science.
To discover how this conservation movement helped restore wildlife populations in America over the past 100 years, watch the video here and click on the "Learn More" button below. But if you really want to wade into the past and have your entire class share in the fun of learning to manage really "wild" wildlife species, have your teacher download the free lesson below on Managing Pleistocene Megafauna. It's a serious interesting peer-driven education and a highly interactive ice-age blast to the past.
Once you've learned about the birth of conservation, you can expand your wildlife knowledge more by exploring Managing Black Bears and Managing White-tailed Deer.
This wildlife education program is made possible with support of the follow educational partners. Teachers can link to their websites for additional information and educational opportunities, such as their American Wilderness Leadership School Youth Program.
At SCI Foundation’s American Wilderness Leadership School location in Jackson, Wyoming, educators and students learn about conservation, wildlife management, and outdoor recreation through outdoor, hands-on activities. Their Hands on Wildlife (HOW) program provides educators with conservation education instructional tools they can use in hands-on instruction.
If you could have flown over North American in 1492 (when Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America) you would have seen a vast wilderness, unbroken by the sweeping hand of civilization. And if you could have somehow counted all the white-tailed deer within the forests then, their numbers would have totaled about 45 million.
Now if you jumped ahead in time some 400 years to 1903 when the first plane did actually fly over Kitty Hawk, North Carolina by Wilbur and Orville Wright, you’d see that the landscape had changed dramatically. Settlers with their axes and plows had transformed many of the lush forests into farms. Settlers’ guns combined with uncontrolled market hunting had also dramatically impacted those 45 million white-tailed deer. In fact, they had been decimated to the point of only an estimated 300,000 deer in the United States by 1903. With such a downward spiral, they seemed doomed to near extinction, right?
But thanks to the birth and evolution of modern wildlife management, things changed dramatically for the white-tailed deer. Now there are about 100 times more deer, some 30 MILLION that now inhabit North America. Think about that for a moment… 100 times more deer than 100 years ago. And today, the “whitetail”, as many people call them, represent the nation’s most abundant wild game resource and one of America’s great conservation success stories… all rolled into one.
All that sounds pretty wonderful on the surface. But with that many deer sharing a limited or shrinking wild landscape with some 300 million humans creates a whole set of serious challenges for wildlife managers, public safety officials and the other species that share those limited wild places. Two reasons that whitetails have been so successful in rebounding their numbers are: 1) they are extremely adaptable to almost any wild or human-made environment, 2) they are a “keystone” species - which means they can dominate and eat so much plant matter in an ecosystem that they can adversely impact all the other species that try to share that ecosystem.
Watch the video on this page plus click on the Learn More button below to "learn lots more" about managing white-tailed deer and how wildlife managers use regulated hunting as a key tool in ecosystem management. To truly become junior wildlife managers, have your teacher download the free lessons on Managing White-tailed Deer below so the entire class can share in the science and discovery of managing your own deer herds. The links below will also help you learn how different places developed their deer management plans. And once you've learned about managing deer, expand your wildlife knowledge by exploring Managing Black Bears.
This wildlife education program is made possible with support of the follow educational partners. Teachers can link to their websites for additional information and educational opportunities, such as their American Wilderness Leadership School Youth Program.
At SCI Foundation’s American Wilderness Leadership School location in Jackson, Wyoming, educators and students learn about conservation, wildlife management, and outdoor recreation through outdoor, hands-on activities. Their Hands on Wildlife (HOW) program provides educators with conservation education instructional tools they can use in hands-on instruction.
The reason this topic is in "Health Science" is because catching fish is healthy for your physical and emotional health by spending quality relaxing time outdoors with family and friends on the water. Then after you've caught some fish for dinner, it's healthy for your body and brain by eating a super protein that's low in calories and yet high in Omega 3. To make the process of cleaning and cooking your catch relatively easy, watch the video above plus explore the helpful content provided here by our friends at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. And believe it or not, cleaning fish actually provides an opportunity to learn more about fish anatomy and fish diets (what the fish was feeding on before you caught it will still be in its stomach).
Staying Sharp - Cleaning is the technique used to prepare fish without removing bones.
Filleting leaves the fish boneless, and occasionally skinless and is generally used for larger
fish. The most important step in preparing any fish is choosing a sharp knife of the
correct size and shape. Most fillet knives have thin, slightly flexible blades five to
eight inches long. A dull knife can be more dangerous than a sharp knife because
you have to work harder to make the proper cuts. Make sure your knife is sharp,
and hold it away from your fingers and body as you carefully prepare your fish.
Cleaning Your Fish is the simple process of removing the scales and internal organs. Then you can cook your fish with the skin and bones in tact and remove the bones before eating. It works fine on most species of fish, especially on pan fish such as perch, crappie and bluegill.
Step #1 - Remove the scales using a spoon of fish scaler. Scrape off the scales by scraping from the tail toward the head.
Step #2 - Without cutting through bones or internal organs, cut around the head, behind the pectoral fins, and down to the anus (also called "the vent").
Step #3 - Break the backbone by bending the head downward and twisting. Remove the head and internal organs. Clean the inside with water while gently scraping away any remaining "stuff".
Step #4 - Check local rules, but generally you can dispose of wrapped fish waste in a trash bin or bury it deep in your garden. Fish waste does not belong in compost bins. If trash pickup is a few days away, consider freezing them until trash removal.
Filleting Your Fish takes a little more time and skill with practice and is often used on larger fish such as salmon or bass. But the rewards are having a clean, skinless and boneless "fillet" to bake or fry. A sharp "fillet knife" is key to successfully filleting your fish.
Step #1 - Cut along the dorsal fin from head to tail and along the anal fin from anus (or vent) to the tail.
Step #2 - Just behind the gill cover make a vertical cut through the flesh down to the bone. This cut extends from the back to the stomach. Deepen the cut made along the dorsal fin working from head to tail. Hold the knife nearly parallel to the row of bones extending upward from the spine to the back. This cut should extend downward only as far as the backbone.
Step #3 - Repeat this procedure on the stomach side. Cut first from behind the gills to the anus, then along the anal fin cut you made earlier. These cuts should be just below the surface of the belly skin to avoid rupturing internal organs. As you cut up toward the backbone your fillet will come free.
Step #4 - Do not cut the fillet from the tail. Flip the fillet so that it is lying skin-side down. Hold the fish down with one hand just in front of the tail fin. Beginning at the tail carefully skin the fillet, working away from your hand. Work slowly and patiently; cutting too deeply will result in cutting through the skin and not cutting deeply enough will result in lost meat.
Besides that fillet knife, "sharpen" your aquatic science by "exploring" the various internal organs of your fish. Check out your fish’s stomach! Examining a fish’s last meal will help you
become a better angler. Knowing what the fish was eating can help you better match your next lure to this species’ diet. We've also included some lessons below that you can share in class that should help you on your way to becoming a fish biologist, or at least knowing their basic anatomy.
To learn how to cook your cleaned fish, click on the "Learn More" button below and get ready to share your catch with a fish dinner.
The helpful content here about how to clean and cook your catch was provided by our friends at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Check out their website links for more information and classroom education materials. In fact, watch this helpful video on "Eating Your Catch" from WIDNR that helps educate you about some healthy science that you didn't consider.
Official Boater Safety Courses
and Boat Safety Education Materials
Long before humans began inhabiting North America, bears ranged across the entire continent. Though bears co-existed with native populations of humans inhabiting North America for some 15,000 years, the arrival of European settlers rapidly reshaped the distribution of black bears. Like other wildlife resources that the settlers found in abundance, they took bears freely with traps and guns. Unfortunately, black bears represented more than just food and furs to settlers. They posed real and perceived threats to families, livestock, and crops, so they shot bears at will.
Besides killing individual bears, the settlers’ plows and axes took a lasting and wider toll. Woodcutting, burning, and clearing changed the wild habitat that the bears needed to survive. Within a 150-year period, much of America’s forests had been cut down. As the wave of human expansion changed the wooded lands into farm fields and pastures, black bears lost much of their native habitat.
Black bear populations remained in some of the more mountainous, swampy, and rugged regions. The few black bears that inhabited these regions came under the pressures of unregulated market hunting for their hides, meat, and fat. Due to their low reproductive rate, bears recover more slowly from population losses than other North American mammals. By 1900, the black bear population shrank in many areas of the country almost to the point of extinction.
Eventually, much of North America began to realize the importance of wildlife management, including the future of the black bear. By the mid 1900s, hunting seasons became heavily controlled or closed altogether, and bear restoration programs began in some states. While all this was happening, the forests that had been cut and burned decades before began to recapture the landscape. Once the wild habitat started to return, black bears began reclaiming their historic range.
Compared to some species, such as the grizzly bear, black bears proved adaptable to human development and under the protection of modern, professional wildlife management, their populations soon recovered in many areas. Beginning in the late 1980s through the start of the twenty-first century, black bear numbers increased at a rate of two percent a year continent-wide, with some states such as New Jersey and Maryland reporting five-fold increases. Though black bears have not yet reclaimed their original range across America, they have rebounded to populations of an estimated 800,000 bears spread across 37 states and all Canadian provinces... the highest population in the past 100 years.
Watch the video on this page plus click on the Learn More button below to "learn lots more" about managing black bears and how wildlife managers use regulated hunting as a key in controlling cultural carrying capacity. Have your teacher download the free lessons on Managing Black Bears below so the entire class can share in the science and discovery of managing these mysterious omnivores. The links below also provide more background on understanding black bears. And once you've learned about managing bears, expand your wildlife knowledge by exploring Managing White-Tailed Deer.
This wildlife education program is made possible with support of the follow educational partners. Teachers can link to their websites for additional information and educational opportunities, such as their American Wilderness Leadership School Youth Program.
At SCI Foundation’s American Wilderness Leadership School location in Jackson, Wyoming, educators and students learn about conservation, wildlife management, and outdoor recreation through outdoor, hands-on activities. Their Hands on Wildlife (HOW) program provides educators with conservation education instructional tools they can use in hands-on instruction.
Approved by IHEA-USA and your state hunting agency
Okay admit it! Kids and even parents today can't seem to "disconnect" from their cell phones long often enough to make time for meaningful face-to-face connections with family and friends.
So what's the solution? One innovative teacher created a summer-school homework assignment that required two "cell phone-addicted" students to make it their "mission to go fishin". As you watch the TV show, try to identify a handful of key elements that can make real family fishing adventures happen. And if you're a student of R3, see where recruitment, retention, and reactivation come into play.
Besides enjoying the action in this program, kids and teachers can share the education that's part of almost every fishing adventure by watching the companion classroom videos and lesson activities with the links below. They're free, fun and an easy to download for engaging peer-driven classroom learning... complete with hands-on sections for getting kids and families fishing.
Fishin' For Food and Fun comes with complete educational content about how to clean and cook your catch and was provided by our friends at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
Fishing YOUR US Forests is your educational "passport to angling adventure". This classroom video has tons of companion lesson activities and resources on how to plan a family fishing adventure on YOUR National Forests. To help plan your next National Forest adventure, click on the logo here.
For all kinds of helpful information and resources on how kids can learn where-to and how-to go fishing, explore our companion KidsFishing.US website. You'll also find lots of fun educational resources for classroom or lakeside learning. Plus, be sure to check out all the helpful resources on TakeMeFishing.org.
Official Boater Safety Courses
and Boat Safety Education Materials
Recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard, approved by NASBLA and your state boating license agency, and approved by Transport Canada
We see information like this in the news all the time. "Studies show that kids spend too much time in front of TVs, Smartphones, and computer screens and not enough time connecting with the natural world and their families."
As if that's not enough bad news, other studies also show that those disconnects from nature and family can undermine our physical and mental health. And too often the "cure" of participating in organized competitive sports only adds to our mental stress when we really need to be de-stressing in quiet, wide-open spaces.
Thankfully, there's a cure. It's called creating your own family-outdoor adventure. And the best part is that it's available on millions of acres in National Forest lands across the country. Plus, it doesn't cost an arm and a leg or make us jump through flaming hoops. Though some parts of the country do have more National Forests than others, most regions still have forests within a day's drive. The video here and information in the "LEARN MORE" section decodes the seven easy steps to creating your personal passport to angling adventure on YOUR National Forests.
Okay, we admit that we need guidance in life from parents and teachers. But we also deserve the chance sometimes to determine what we'd like to do and when. That only seems fair, right? How else are we supposed to problem-solve and develop life skills? So really, this whole passport to adventure exercise benefits our parents by helping us develop skills for navigating through life. (Nice psychology, huh?)
Here's the drill. You can do this with friends, siblings (you know, your brothers or sisters), or classmates. Watch the video once and simply enjoy the content. Then take a moment to consider what kind of outdoor adventure you'd like to have, what's realistic, and how you can use the millions of acres of National Forests. Then watch the video again and pause at the 7 key steps to make some notes on how you can accomplish each step. That may include recruiting help from adults.
We don't want to spoil the "fun" of planning your personal passport to an angling adventure, but chances are you're also going to learn problem-solving, math, geography, science, nature, and government. In fact, you and your class can elevate this fun educational adventure into a dynamic peer-driven learning (your teacher will love those words) experience where you ask and explore critical questions. Simply download the free lesson below, Discovering YOUR National Forests… Through Angling Adventures for learning fun stuff you can actually use in life right now. There's a win-win for you.
And don't forget to have your teacher open the LEARN MORE section below for additional information that will help guide the classroom learning where all the students get to design their own personal passports to adventure. Get a jump-start on designing your adventure by exploring the U.S. Forest Service Regions near you at... Fish YOUR National Forests.
For all kinds of other helpful information and resources on how kids can learn where to and how to go fishing, explore our companion KidsFishing.US website. To discover more about becoming a future angler, visit our educational partners that helped make this video, webpage, and lesson possible by clicking on their logos below.
Official Boater Safety Courses
and Boat Safety Education Materials
Recognized by the U.S. Coast Guard, approved by NASBLA and your state boating license agency, and approved by Transport Canada
History shows that rivers are essential to building thriving communities, but who does a river really belong to? The Ottaway describes the life and livelihood a river provides to both human and natural communities through the perspectives of all who depend on it. Explore with your students the struggle for balance and viability that humans must mitigate to both use rivers to support cities and keep natural areas healthy for wildlife.
History shows that rivers are essential to building thriving communities, but who does a river really belong to? The Ottaway describes the life and livelihood a river provides to both human and natural communities through the perspectives of all who depend on it. Explore with your students the struggle for balance and viability that humans must mitigate to both use rivers to support cities and keep natural areas healthy for wildlife.
History shows that rivers are essential to building thriving communities, but who does a river really belong to? The Ottaway describes the life and livelihood a river provides to both human and natural communities through the perspectives of all who depend on it. Explore with your students the struggle for balance and viability that humans must mitigate to both use rivers to support cities and keep natural areas healthy for wildlife.
What is biodiversity and sustainability, and why are they important? “Bio” refers to living things, and living things do not survive independently of each other. Each organism depends on other organisms for their food, water and shelter in some way. The more types of living things in a community, the healthier the community is for each individual life form. Diversity describes the situation when many different kinds live together. Their relationship is symbiotic, because they all depend on each other. For diversity to thrive, the community must have what it needs to continue, which is the same as being sustainable. Something that is sustainable is meant to go on forever.
Farm fields are an example of a monoculture, which is the direct opposite of a diverse community. Monocultures have only one plant in it, and no other plant, bird, insect or animal life. In a place where agriculture or towns take up most of the land, that can leave little habitat left for animal or insect life. The Green Bay Botanical Gardens demonstrates how people can make diverse, sustainable landscapes at homes, schools and businesses to provide much needed habitat for native creatures.
Because the plants highlighted are native to Wisconsin, they not only attract butterflies and birds to your yard, but they also are easy to care for. You will also learn how plants use abiotic resources such as carbon dioxide and water through photosynthesis to create everything that we need to eat, use and breathe!
The discussion guide link has been provided to help focus students on key points before and after viewing the video. Because the Green Bay Botanical Garden’s mission is to demonstrate what people can do to transform their own spaces into diverse and sustainable natural environments, the most important question is, “What are you going to do, now that you know?”
Downloadable content with ideas and resources from Green Bay Botanical Gardens that will help you plan your own garden are included in the video and links.
