What is conservation?
Many of you have likely taken part in conservation and not even known it. Can you think of any ways you have been a conservationist? Conservation is protecting our natural resources (water, wildlife, plants, and the land) so that they are available for everyone to enjoy today and in the future. Conservation is used to control, manage, and preserve our natural resources so they will always be around for us to enjoy and use. If we use too much of a resource then it could disappear forever. Back when pioneers first started living on the landscape, they killed almost all of the bison and all of the passenger pigeons on accident because they didn’t think they would actually disappear. They overused those natural resources. But also, if we don’t use enough of a resource then it could grow too big and cause other resources to disappear. An example is white-tailed deer in a riparian area. When there are too many of them they damage the trees and plants ruining the habitat and hurting other wildlife. Every habitat has something called carrying capacity. Carrying capacity is how much of every animal, plant, and person you can have in a habitat. If you go over that number then the habitat and everything in it starts to get hurt. To prevent our natural resources from being overused or underused, many conservation strategies are in place such as restoring and improving habitat, preserving pieces of land so they don’t get overused, and hunting.
Hunters were the first conservationists and remain the mightiest force the conservation world has ever known. Every time you buy hunting and fishing gear, part of that money goes directly back to conservation. To restore and improve habitat and preserve pieces of land it takes a lot of money. Most of that money comes from hunters and anglers so without them, we would lose a lot of our natural resources. Hunting and angling is one of the greatest forms of conservation. Hunting and fishing is also used as a tool to manage wildlife populations. If there are too many deer in a habitat then they will start to destroy it. To keep that from happening, wildlife biologists determine how many deer need to be removed from an area so they give out hunting licenses to hunters to help them remove the deer and keep the ecosystem healthy.
There are many ways you can be a conservationist and protect our natural resources. Becoming a hunter or angler is a great way to support conservation as well as become more connected to nature. If hunting or angling isn’t something you like or want to do then you can also always be sure to follow the leave no trace principals and everywhere you go clean up after yourself and others by picking up trash, not dumping harmful materials in waterways, and respecting wildlife. Another way you can become a conservationist is by joining citizen science groups and help collect data for researchers (These are listed under the activities section)! Just by doing little things like that you can be a conservationist and protect our natural resources.
In the lesson content below, you will learn more about conservation, natural resources, different conservation strategies, and why they are important. You will also get to define some very important terms, create a field journal, and then participate in a fun activity! By the end of the lesson you should have lots of knowledge to answer the question above!
Vocabulary
Carrying Capacity
The maximum number of individuals in a species that an environment can support for the long term is carrying capacity.
Conservation
Conservation is to preserve, protect, save, defend, maintain, and sustain our natural resources so we can continue to enjoy and use them.
Preservation
Preservation is to keep our natural resources from being used or destroyed in any way.
Natural Resources
Natural Resources are things such as minerals, forests, water, wildlife, and land that occur in nature and can be used by humans.
Hunting
Hunting is going out in nature and harvesting wild animals like deer, elk, and ducks for food.
Angling
Angling is another word for fishing. Fishing is when you go out to a lake, stream, or pond and catch fish. .
Harvesting
Harvesting is the collecting or gathering food such as wild animals and plants
Focus Questions
How do we conserve our ecosystems?
How does carrying capacity affect habitats?
Lesson Content
Natural Resources
In this lesson you will learn about our natural resources and what makes them so important! What natural resources do you use everyday?
Best for grades K-8
Carrying Capacity
In these lessons learn about carrying capacity and what happens when it is exceeded! What happens when there are too many animals in an ecosystem?
Best for grades 3-8
Best for grades 5-8
Hunting is Conservation
In these lessons learn about how hunting funds conservation, how it is used as a tool for conservation, and why people are so passionate about it! Does anyone you know hunt or fish?
Best for grades 5-8
Best for grades 3-8
Activities
1. Oh Deer Game (Carrying Capacity)
To start make a large circle out of string or rope.
Have half of the kids stand inside of it and pretend they are deer. Have them run around inside of it. It should be large enough that they can easily move.
Slowly keep adding more kids to the circle running around until they are having a harder time moving and no space left.
This will show them how carrying capacity works and what happens when there are too many deer (kids) in a habitat.
2. Join iNaturalist
This citizen science data base allows you to contribute to science and become a conservationist. Every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. Take pictures of your findings and then iNaturalist shares the findings with scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to help scientists find and use your data. All you have to do is observe! This also allows you to connect with experts who can identify what you are observing!
Go to https://www.inaturalist.org/ and join today!
3. Join FrogWatch USA Citizen Science Data Project
FrogWatch USA is AZA's citizen science program and provides individuals, groups, and families opportunities to learn about wetlands in their communities by reporting on the calls of local frogs and toads.
To learn more about how you can join, go to https://www.aza.org/frogwatch and learn how to become a trained volunteer so you can take students and groups out to do citizen science monitoring and contribute to conservation!
4. Join the Great Sunflower Project
This is a citizen science data base that counts pollinators. Started in 2008 as a way to identify where pollinators are doing well and where they are not. We also aim to give people like you the tools to learn about what is happening with the pollinators in the places they care about. While we love to get data from our namesake species, Lemon Queen Sunflowers, you can participate by watching any plant.
5. Join eBird
This is a free citizen science data base where you record the birds you see! This is a fun and easy tool for students and adults alike to use. You can plan a field trip to a place like Teller Wildlife Refuge and as a class do some birding and record what you see to eBird! The goal of eBird is to gather this information in the form of checklists of birds, archive it, and freely share it to power new data-driven approaches to science, conservation and education. At the same time, tools are developed that make birding more rewarding. From being able to manage lists, photos and audio recordings, to seeing real-time maps of species distribution, to alerts that let you know when species have been seen, eBird strives to provide the most current and useful information to the birding community.
Field Journal Prompts
Write a few sentences and/or draw a picture to show how much you learned!
1. How is hunting conservation?
2. How can you protect our natural resources?
3. Explain carrying capacity.
4. What variables affect carrying capacity?