ARKive is partnering with the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) to celebrate EE Week – the nation’s largest celebration of environmental education. We’ve invited some top-notch guest bloggers to share their story of exploring the natural world outside with ARKive in support of this year’s EE Week theme, ‘Taking Technology Outdoors’. Kicking off the week is Sarena, an environmental educator and mother of an adorable little girl, who shares how she has used ARKive to discover new-to-you species in their local ecosystem. Let’s see what outdoor adventures Sarena and her daughter experienced with ARKive!

Species Discovery through my kid’s eyes

Hello blogosphere! Before I delve into the fantasticness that is the ARKive activity, let me introduce myself. I am not a blogger; this is my first foray into this realm. But I am an environmental educator as my ‘regular job’ with a background in biology and zoology, as well as a mom who shares my love and appreciation for the natural world with my nearly nine year old daughter on a daily basis. This is an important point to remember when it comes to the activity we chose to experience.

The kid and I decided to try out the Species Discovery activity. I think it’s fantastic to go explore, see what you see, and then decide what it is based on the behaviors, appearances, diet, and so forth (there’s the biologist in me!). Problem becomes when you, the parent, realize finding a place to go, to which you’ve never been, in the limited amount of free time in your currently busy (ok, let’s face it, currently busy? When is that never true?) schedule is exceptionally difficult. (Score one for the environmental educator exploratory parent! And yet, not helpful in this instance. Cue disappointed game show sounds.) I wracked my brain and was delighted to have a light bulb moment. There is a riparian habitat preserve to which the kid has never been. As we drove the discussion in the car was excited chatter about the goals of our exploration. She was prepared with her camera and anticipated getting pictures and video. We arrived, brought along our umbrellas to block the toasty sun (and prevent our pale wintery skin from gaining a particularly unhealthy pink glow), grabbed the camera and water, and began the adventure.

Capturing photos and video was easy. Spotting animals and plants we’d never seen…not so much. Luckily there were some birds neither she nor I knew. Our time came to a close and we hopped back into the car, where she spent the ride revisiting the experience and carefully analyzing the best pictures and finalizing her decision. Over the next week and a half we continued to discuss the time we spent at the preserve and the activity goals. One evening we brought her younger cousin with us to an arts event. In the car I giggled to myself while pretending to not listen to the exchange happening in the back seat. The kid authoritatively showed the pictures and video to her cousin, while explaining that she was going to give that bird a scientific name and describe all about it since she’d never seen this bird before our adventure. He responded with a frustrating “oh I’ve seen that. I know what that is.” The kid was unimpressed when his response to her query of the name of the bird was “I don’t know!” and remained confident in her choice.

After homework one evening we had some minutes to spare and sat down to complete the other part of the project. The kid was curious about what a scientific name was and I caught myself beginning to describe Linnaeus taxonomy and that scientific names are in Latin. Blank stare. Oops. Luckily for me, she’s incredibly patient with me especially during my moments of biology nerdiness. I simplified and we talked about how scientific names are the same for animals no matter where the animal is found, as a way for all scientists to know what animal another scientist is discussing, while common names are often different in different places. She understood (at least there wasn’t a blank stare in response), especially when we talked about different languages people speak in different countries and made the comparison to names.

Overall, the adventure this activity afforded us was one I greatly value for a variety of reasons. One, I got to spend some fun time with my kid, looking from her point of view at the world around us. This is vital to me as a parent and an educator. Two, it was another opportunity to appreciate nature and how scientists work. A recent quote from the kid that gave me a ‘parenting win’ moment was “Scientists are always curious and clever. I’m always curious, so I’m a scientist.” I’m so incredibly glad she has that perspective! Three, stretching myself as a parent and an educator. Writing this blog post is definitely a step out of my comfort zone, but a huge step I am happy to take. I assume if you are a fan of ARKive, you probably already appreciate nature and get out into it as much as possible (although we all know what assuming does…), but regardless I feel compelled to say: get outside. Explore the world around you away from the hustle and bustle of daily life. Take off those modern convenience blinders and see where you are. And bring along your kid(s), or borrow a few (with permission, of course!), or both. Learn through their eyes. Then share it.

Sarena G, Environmental Educator and Mom

Add Comment (0) Share

ARKive and the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) have partnered to celebrate this year’s Environmental Education (EE) Week.  The largest celebration of environmental education in America, EE Week strives to connect people to nature through a new theme each year. This year’s theme is ‘Taking Technology Outdoors’ and we’ve organized a fantastic list of guest bloggers who are using ARKive outside to connect their students and children to nature. Be sure to visit the ARKive blog every day this week for a new guest blogger with an inspirational story.

Here to share a little more background on EE Week and more ways to get involved this week is Sarah, the Education Program Coordinator at NEEF:

It’s spring, and as the weather begins to warm, thoughts turn to outdoor activities. In today’s era of tech gadgets and global connectivity, there are new and exciting ways to connect young people with the wildlife in their communities.

Join National Environmental Education Week (EE Week) for Greening STEM: Taking Technology Outdoors, April 14-20, 2013 and explore how technology can enhance environmental learning both inside and outside the classroom.

Hosted by the National Environmental Education Foundation, EE Week is the largest celebration of environmental education in the United States held each year the week before Earth Day and inspires environmental learning and stewardship.

In 2012, EE Week kicked off a multi-year Greening STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) initiative on the important role the environment plays in engaging students in STEM learning and helping them solve 21st century challenges.

The environment provides a gateway to STEM learning through hands-on, real-world projects on topics like energy efficiency and resource conservation that incorporate all four pillars of STEM.

Research indicates that 77% of teachers in the US believe using technology in the classroom increases student motivation to learn, while 75% of 1,900 surveyed educators in the US said students who spend regular time outdoors tend to be more creative and better problem-solvers.

View and share NEEF’s new infographic ’Tech & Our Planet’ inspired by this year’s EE Week theme:

Providing students with opportunities to connect with and learn about nature through technology can also mean improved workforce readiness: in the US, STEM jobs are expected to increase by 20.6% between 2008 and 2018, compared to 10.1% for all other jobs, and 71% of STEM jobs will be within the technology field.

Connect with EE Week on Facebook and Twitter to learn more, and join us for a Tweet Chat on Greening STEM starting on April 15 at 1 PM ET, using the hashtag #EEWeek. And be sure to visit the ARKive blog each day for a new inspirational story on how teachers and parents are ‘Taking Technology Outdoors’ with ARKive!

Sarah Kozicki, Education Program Coordinator, National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF)

Add Comment (0) Share

Olivier Raynaud, Blue Ventures

In this week’s guest blog we meet Olivier Raynaud, the Maintirano & Barren Isles Project Coordinator for Blue Ventures. Blue Ventures is an award-winning social enterprise that works with local communities to conserve threatened marine and coastal environments, both protecting biodiversity and alleviating poverty.The Barren Isles project aims to protect some of Madagascar’s healthiest and most diverse coral reefs whilst ensuring the sustainability of local and traditional livelihoods, by establishing a Locally Managed Marine Area in the Barren Isles, on the West coast of Madagascar.

Hi Oliver, welcome to the ARKive blog! Can you tell us a little bit about your scientific background?

My academic background is centred on engineering and the management of public environmental issues (such as the design and coordination of local initiatives to regulate natural resources exploitation), but my practical scientific know-how mainly results from various field experiences in the Pacific, Caribbean and Indian Ocean. It includes ecological monitoring, research on threatened species (seabirds, turtles, sharks…), invasive species control and eradication, and socio-economic research.

Why do you do what you do?

The money! No just kidding, I do it because I enjoy myself. This is a totally personal judgement, but to my knowledge, conservation is the only field that has enhanced my motivation and implication in a way that permits me to work in an efficient manner. My passion for nature and my somewhat subconscious need to spend time on issues that I find ethically rewarding, have catalyzed my involvement. At the moment I can’t imagine being as stimulated as I currently am, if I was working on any other mission than one aiming for the conservation of species, habitats and traditional livelihoods.

Why is scientific research important?

Whatever project it is that you are working on, success and achievements will be linked to the notion of progress. The trick is that progress cannot be assessed unless you are in some way measuring, determining and analysing all relevant parameters. Scientific research allows you to justify and elaborate result-oriented, pertinent strategies to start with, but more importantly it gives you the information necessary to evaluate the progress being made. Hence scientific research provides the knowledge necessary to steer and adjust action plans and strategies to ensure their efficiency.

Tell us a bit about the project you are currently working on and what the end result will be…

The project aims to protect some of Madagascar’s healthiest and most diverse coral reefs, and ensure the sustainability of local and traditional livelihoods. Our strategy is based on the establishment of a Locally Managed Marine Area in the Barren Isles, on the West coast of Madagascar, and expected outcomes include the preservation of pelagic fish stocks and ecosystem services, local capacity building in conservation, development of alternative and durable livelihoods, and the obliteration of illegal, destructive practices.

In our quest for a durable and efficient management configuration, in order to preserve and organise the utilisation of the Barren Isles’ precious ecosystems, Blue Ventures has had to address local overexploitation and unsustainable practices, but also considerable outside threats. These threats include the presence of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing vessels, mining interests targeting the islands for guano extraction, and illegal dive teams using scuba gear to collect sea cucumbers.

These external pressures are so conspicuous they are likely to discourage any conservation efforts made by the local fishermen, and in the long term may constitute a threat to community conservation. In order to avoid such a perilous start, and simultaneously take in hand all the issues, the community-based management of the area will need to be based on a primary legal status, an official Marine Protected Area.

What is the process for creating a Marine Protected Area in the Barren Isles?

In order to design and request a Temporary Protection Status that is relevant and tailored to the needs of the local communities, we embarked on a journey to consult each and every one of the 6 coastal villages and 8 islands connected with the project, all the way down to Soahany, 75 km south of Maintirano.

Nosy Dondosy, Madagascar © Blue Ventures

This was our brand new motorised pirogue’s first trip, and it consisted of a busy and demanding two weeks, which introduced the boat to the great variety of waterways in the area; unpredictable open sea swells, coastal breaking waves, meandering mangrove channels, and idyllic lagoons.

As the public meetings were held in the first weeks of November – before migrant communities head back south to their home towns for the rainy season – the great majority of the fishing communities participated in discussions on resource use initiatives in each location. They proposed regulations and drew outlines for a perimeter of the MPA, according to the conservation targets, and with regard to their preferred fishing zones.

Following this trip, a large meeting was held in Maintirano on December 5th and 6th, co-organised by the Direction Regionale de l’Environnement et des Forets and Blue Ventures. It gathered together representatives from local communities, regional authorities, and other stakeholders for creation of an Atelier Scientifique. This is where the conservation targets are identified, and an Atelier de Concertation is also made – where the stakeholders’ desire for MPA creation is formalised in an engagement document. The assembly agreed on proposing a perimeter that delimits a huge area; the proposed MPA includes all of the Barren Isles, 100 kilometres of coastline and numerous remote reefs, for a total area of over 5,000 square kilometres!

Public consultation in Ambalahonko, Madagascar © Blue Ventures

As the MPA has now been approved by stakeholders on the regional scale, the project now needs to be brought to the national level with another Atelier de Concertation to be held in Antananarivo in January – then the Temporary Protection Status can officially be requested to the environmental government entities. In the meantime, the proposed delimitation may be an issue for some national stakeholders, such as shrimp fishery representatives, and hence maybe subject to change.

However, what does remain certain is that stakeholder and community participation has driven this project a long way in the past weeks. This steady wind has propelled all of us at a steady pace through a rather smooth first leg of a very long LMMA trip!

What is the best and worst thing about being a conservation scientist?

It seems to me that the advantages and drawbacks of this profession are related to the feeling of working on legitimate, essential and challenging issues. The best thing of the job is motivation; being aware how pertinent your tasks are, and realizing how this wonderful occupation is significant in light of worldwide issues and future generations.

The worst thing of the job is frustration; realizing that despite knowing it makes sense to invest time in effort in such genuine and rightful cause, some other project stakeholders do not understand the need and critical importance of these issues.

What do you enjoy most about your job?

What I enjoy the most is being out there! It’s a combination of simply enjoying personal interests and working on public interest issues on the spot. Because you’re constantly confronted to the local reality, some days you’re disappointed by unreasonable behaviours, cupidity of individuals or lack of concern in long term public interests, but that’s only some days. The rest of the time your reaction to events is predominantly paced by YES, WOW, or RIGHT ON!

What is your favourite species or group of species and why?

Recently, my favourite encounters have been with rays. Meeting with these majestic creatures makes any snorkelling/diving sessions wonderful; whether they’re spotted eagles, mantas or devil rays, observing these massive bird-like shapes smoothly fly through the water is quite a show. My admiration is also due to their very social behaviour: how crazy is it that when you scream underwater, one of these beautiful rays may turn around, and circle you slowly before it slowly moves away? One of rare wild animals that seems to show respect and politely say “Hi” to humans despite our generally reprehensible behaviour!

Spotted eagle ray

Taking inspiration from Team WILD, what would your science superhero power be?

It’d have to be the ability to travel in time, or more precisely to send other people in time! See, what constitutes the greatest asset in the Barren Isles is the current good health of ecosystems and the affluence of marine resources. It’s an asset but it also brings major difficulties; how do you get people to adhere to conservation initiatives when today there are plenty of resources for everyone?

Being a superhero, I’d send a few community leaders to the Barren Isles in 2050, to make them realize that 2013’s prolific natural resources were exploited in a way that did not allow the regeneration of stocks. If we could make local communities realize the impacts that current practices potentially engender on the long term, that’d be a game changer for conservation and our project!

Thanks for Oliver! Do keep us posted on progress with the Barren Isles project.

Learn more about Blue Ventures and the Barren Isles project.

Test your own science superhero skills with Team WILD and learn more about coral reef conservation on ARKive.

Add Comment (0) Share

Hello my fine feathered ARKiver’s. My name is George Rowe and I am a Producer at Thought Den, a digital design agency based in Bristol, UK. We’ve been lucky enough to work with ARKive on a couple of exciting projects, including ‘Survival’ their endangered species gaming app, and I wanted to tell you a little about our most recent: Team WILD.

Why did ARKive choose us? We’re a specialist digital studio and our working philosophy is that of ‘playful learning’. People engage more deeply, learn better, and are generally more involved with content if they can experience it through play.

Games are rewarding because we are evolutionarily hardwired to enjoy learning patterns. And games that reflect real challenges have even more appeal. If the content of these challenges is also educational then so much the better!

The IDEA

Team WILD began life as an idea called ‘The Wildlife Apprentice’, an online game that would get kids to engage with scientific careers.

In the early meetings it was clear there were two different routes we could take with this game. We could either try and TEACH in the game, actively having people complete puzzles based on curricula learning outcomes (a la Manga High), or we could REINFORCE classroom learning with a game that would let kids explore the concepts in a playful way. Naturally, our preference was for the latter.

Science IS cool, but our challenge here was to find a way of showing the amazing things scientists do in an engaging and plausible wrapper. ‘The Wildlife Apprentice’ was a nice simple hook to hang it on, but it was quickly shelved due to potential copyright issues. What other hooks could we use to frame our game? Some ideas from our original proposal:

• Science Armageddon: all the scientists have vanished. You must now do all the science!
• Alien Scientist: you have infiltrated ARKive’s science department. You must now do science well enough so you are not discovered!
• Science Superheroes: A team of science superheroes need your help to do science! You must travel the world doing science!

The question we ended up asking ourselves was: who wouldn’t want to be a science superhero?

The team at ARKive spoke with some tame scientists to learn more about the tasks they performed. Once we had our mega list of science, we sat down with the Key Stage 3 UK National Curriculum and our own list of game types and mechanics and explored different ways to turn these activities into individual mini-games.

Team WILD wireframes

Scientists survey predator and prey on the savannah to work out the dynamics between them. What if you were running along the savannah, pressing keys to count predator and prey? An idea was born. And scientists collect uninfected frogs in the jungles of Montserrat to breed them? This thing is designing itself!

Reward is also a key mechanic in games; it gives an extra little nudge for players to try again, to try and do BETTER. Along with the classic highscore table, by scoring enough points in Team WILD you can also join the team and unlock super cool treats.

Original character sketches for Team WILD

The LOOK

From the outset we thought a comic/graphic novelesque style had the balance of fun with a slightly more adult edge. Once the concepts were finalised we brought in specialist games illustrator Nat Al-Tahhan to create our science superhero characters. Wanting to get away from the whole ‘scientists wear white coats’ stigma, we decided to give our heroes lab CAPES instead.

Parallax scrolling, where different layers move at different speeds to give an illusion of depth, was used for this exact purpose. Our wonder-intern Ellen created the beautiful layers for these (as well as the Team WILD logo), under the tutelage of Creative Director Ben T and Senior Designer Ben W. Ben W then tied everything together with a lovely user interface and some spit and polish.

The BUILD

An important part of any game project these days is deciding what platform you are going to produce for. We decided to go with a faithful Flash game for a number of reasons: it’s a proven platform, nearly every school computer can run it, and it delivers the most bang for buck.

Our Senior Developer Corin nailed the game mechanics, parallax scrolling backgrounds and interface screens, while developer Ben M (we have a lot of Ben’s) whipped up the backend for the highscore tables.

We took a beta version of Team WILD into a couple of local schools in Bristol for some essential user testing. The kids liked the games, and though some understood the science content it wasn’t quite clear enough, so we took the decision to add in some more feedback information after each play.

The GAME

So, after another couple of weeks of refinement, play testing and level design we had a game!

Team WILD has had around 80,000 plays so far and an average play time of six and a half minutes, which is really great for an online science-based game.

We really admire the work that ARKive do, and the chance to work with them again was really fantastic. Hopefully Team WILD will help inspire some conservationists of the future.

George Rowe, Thought Den Producer & Studio Manager

Add Comment (0) Share

When Carolyn at Arkive invited me to be a guest blogger, I jumped at the opportunity to tell everyone about our exciting new campaign – Saving Big Cats and Wild Dogs.

Instinctively I started by writing down all the shocking statistics, such as: ‘as few as 3,500 snow leopards, 2,500 dholes and around 1,000 Persian leopards are left in the wild’ but then I thought – how depressing! This is the last thing people need to hear, especially as we are all recovering from a cold wet winter and looking forward to the joys of spring. So, instead I’ve decided to skip the miserable bit as much as possible and focus on the positive difference we will make to some of our top predators.

The Persian leopard is one of the eight recognised subspecies of leopard

For the next year or so we will be raising awareness and raising money to save nine species of big cat and wild dog from extinction across the globe. I don’t have the space to tell you everything here so I’ll just focus on a couple of species for now.

Scottish wildcat

Let’s start close to home – the Scottish wildcat. Ok it isn’t officially a ‘big’ cat but it is the only native cat we have and as it is at serious risk of extinction we felt it was essential to include it in the campaign. Now confined to the highlands of Scotland it has been dubbed the Highland tiger but this cat once roamed freely throughout the UK. The biggest threat to the Scottish wildcat is hybridisation from breeding with domestic and feral cats and producing viable hybrid offspring. There is thought to be as few as 35 true wildcats left in Scotland but it is difficult to be sure because apart from being incredibly elusive, it is also very hard to tell a pure wildcat from a feral hybrid by sight alone.  In order to save our only native cat we need to know where the pure populations exist so we can put measures in place to protect them. Therefore, we are funding a project to study DNA samples and isolate the ‘wild gene’ in order to confidently identify once and for all the true wildcat.

The biggest threat to Scottish wildcats is hybridisation from breeding with domestic and feral cats

Snow leopard

Further afield, in Mongolia we are concentrating our attention on the endangered snow leopard. Whilst the threat of poaching is often the most quoted reason for the snow leopards decline, it is not that clear cut. In fact one of the biggest threats comes from the conflict with local herdsmen who kill the snow leopard in retaliation to them predating on their livestock. This, in conjunction with the domestic livestock out-competing the snow leopards’ natural prey species (the ibex and argali) for grazing rights, paints a bleak future for this charismatic animal. However, all is not lost and we are funding vital work to reduce the conflict between the local herdsman and the snow leopard and also assessing the availability of natural prey species. The teams in Mongolia are making great progress and you can keep up to date with it all on our website.

Snow leopards are able to jump as far as 15 metres!

We are also supporting work on the dhole, or Asiatic wild dogs, in Cambodia and Nepal, the lion, African leopard and African wild dog in Tanzania, Malawi and Kenya, the cheetah in South Africa, the Ethiopian wolf in Ethiopia and one of the rarest big cats, the Persian leopard in Iran. Here at People’s Trust for Endangered Species we work in partnership with other organisations and believe that conservation should be built on sound scientific evidence. We identify the problem then research possible solutions before investing in practical on-the-ground action.

Each African wild dog has a unique coat pattern

We have put on our thinking caps at PTES and come up with some fun new ideas on how you can get involved in saving our big cats and wild dogs. You can twin your pet with one of its wild cousins or simply befriend a wild animal. If you have some spare time you could hold a claw (nail) painting party or even organise a sponsored dog walk at night – Bark at the Moon.

Kiki the cat has been twinned with a leopard, as shown by her tag.             © Frankie Lees

For more information please visit www.savingcatsanddogs.org.

Thank you.

 Hannah Stockwell, PTES Fundraising Officer

Add Comment (0) Share