Hold on to that Balloon!

Students are often very excited to learn about things that they can personally do to help wild animals. Taking action, and knowing your actions are having a positive impact, can be very empowering. 

During our grade 4 Keep It Wild! workshop, Save our Seas, students learn about the impact that human pollution has on ocean animals. They also learn simple things that they can do to make a positive change for wild animals. One such action is to prevent the release of balloons into our environment. Once balloons break and come down to earth, they can be ingested by wild animals, and their attachments can entangle wild animals. 

 Take a few minutes to learn more about the impact of balloons at: Alliance for Balloon Education. Then take a few more minutes to tell someone else about the negative impact the release of balloons can have. 

Entangled Bird (Photo: Alliance for Balloon Education)

Make a Change for Earth Day

In honour of Earth Day, pledge to make a lasting change for the earth and the animals by getting a re-usable water bottle and committing to using it, instead of buying plastic water bottles. Here's one of the reasons why:


www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway

This is a photograph of a dead albatross chick taken on Midway Atoll, a remote nesting site in the middle of the North Pacific. Every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking because of the plastic that their parents are accidentally feeding them. Think of the difference we could all make for animals like the albatross if we gave up using plastic water bottles! To learn more about marine debris and the impact it's having on wild animals, check out our Keep It Wild! workshop, "Save our Seas?" http://www.keepitwildeducation.com/for-teachers

Save Our Seas

 Most of our Keep It Wild! workshops focus on wild animals in captivity. But we also think it's important to talk about wild habitats, because wild animals can't survive without them. It's easy to make a difference for wild animals by taking care of their habitats.

Check out these great pictures from Bendale Public School. Students there pledged to help wild animals by helping their habitats. They learned about marine debris and the terrible effects it can have on wildlife. Then they learned how they could make a difference by reducing, reusing and recycling plastic products.

New Year's Resolutions

Happy New Year! Why not resolve to help animals this year? Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1) Why not read a book about helping animals and put some of the suggestions into action? For kids, check out 50 Awesome Ways Kids Can Help Animals: Fun and Easy Ways to Be a Kind Kid, by Ingrid Newkirk. For adults, The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights: Simple Acts of Kindness to Help Animals in Trouble, also by Ingrid Newkirk, is a great place to start.

2) Donate to an organization that works to help animals. Zoocheck Canada works to help wild animals, both in the wild and in captivity. (http://www.zoocheck.com/)

3) Visit an animal sanctuary this year. Maybe plan a trip this summer to the Donkey Sanctuary of Canada, located near Guelph (http://www.thedonkeysanctuary.ca/). Take a picnic lunch and enjoy an afternoon grooming donkeys.

4) Volunteer with an organization that helps animals.

5) Visit a nearby shoreline, ravine, or greenspace and spend some time cleaning up wild habitats for the animals that live there.

A Student's Letter

Here's a letter from a student who particpated in A Keep It Wild Workshop about Marine Debris:

     Thank you for teaching me about animals and the sea animals and plastic. I like the game with the marbles. I didn't know the animals got tied up. If we keep on dumping things on the lake and ocean, the albatross baby will die. I will try to not use too much plastic bottles. And I will not dump in the lakes and ocean.
     I like the part when we used the water and tested if the things float or not.  I saw a lot of pictures of Albatross babies that died from plastic. I feel sad. I learned a lot. I will tell people what I learned from you.
    From, Joshua.

If your class participated in a Keep It Wild workshop, send us a letter too. We'd love to hear what you liked and what you learned. And we'd love to know that you are going to tell other people how to help animals, just like Joshua did.

Inspiration

It can be hard work trying to help wild animals that are in need. The work can be sad, frustrating, and sometimes, it can even seem futile. Everyone needs to be reminded of the stories that have a happy ending! Check out this amazing video of a humpback whale that's trapped in a fishing net. The situation seems hopeless, and the video is riveting. The ending is the inspiration we all need to keep trying, even when things seem insurmountable!

All sorts of marine animals, like whales and dolphins, seabirds, seals, and sea turtles are at risk of entanglement because of the debris that litters our oceans. You may not be able to help untangle a humpback whale, but you can do your part to help wildlife by participating in the Great Canadian ShoreLine CleanUp this September. Picking up plastic bags, bottle caps, balloons, and other garbage from Toronto's shoreline will prevent these things from entering the waterways, and harming wild animals. Check it out at: http://shorelinecleanup.ca/