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5-8 Activities: Wildlife Refuges

National wildlife refuges are lands set aside for wildlife. Some animals live entire lifetimes within a single home refuge. For many others, a refuge might serve as a place to rest and feed during a long migration. Many wildlife refuges serve other needs, too, such as space for military training and grazing of livestock, natural water purification, recreation, and a place where people can retreat from urban environments. You can help your students start to understand what these special places are for and to appreciate the wildlife refuges or similar sanctuaries near their homes.

Rest for the Weary

Students could begin by talking about trips they have taken. Where did they stay when the trip was long? Work in the idea of needing a safe place to sleep and a place to get meals once in a while, as well as gasoline if traveling by car.

Migratory birds make long journeys as well. Using a map of North America, have students decide what routes birds might follow as they travel from Alaska and Canada to Central and South America. Show them the actual flyways on the map here or in the October 1996 issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC magazine. Ask them questions about places en route. What must the birds have during their journey? Safe places to rest and food to eat. Where can the birds find food to eat? Since many of them are waterbirds, they need lakes and rivers and marshes. Students can identify refuges that are near heavily populated or urban places and discuss where the migratory birds might stay if there were no such places set aside for them.

Sharing Turf

Divide your students into groups of four. Give each group a worksheet that lists the following items: Farming, Roads, Songbirds, Shopping Malls, Logging, Geese, Trumpeter Swans, Cattle Grazing, Monarch Butterflies, Snowmobiling, Visiting the Beach, California Condors, Hunting, Grizzly Bears, Highways, Schools, Gray Wolves, Bird Watching, Florida Panthers, Camping, Elk, Walrus, Oil Wells, American Bison, Power Plants, Gold Mines. Give each group 15 minutes to discuss the items and arrange them into broad categories. Have students from each group present their lists on the board or on an overhead and explain the rationale behind their results. Have students discuss potential conflicts between human activities and wildlife needs and ask them to brainstorm means of resolving or minimizing these conflicts.

Create an Endangered Species Box with your class. Secure a sturdy storage box. Decorate the outside with pictures, either drawn by your students, taken from books, magazines, and newspapers, or printed from sites on the World Wide Web. Have your students create poetry, songs, short plays, reports, or artwork about endangered plants and animals to add to the box. Fill the box over the course of a few weeks or months. During that time, you could invite several wildlife specialists into your classroom to discuss habitats and endangered species. When the box is full, set aside one or a few class periods for unpacking the box. Let each student present the things he or she added to the collection.

If possible, lead a class field trip to explore a nearby wildlife refuge and meet some of the people who work there.

To the Geography Education Program.

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