Mrs. Cirino - Science Unit- 4th Grade

Lesson Title:    Carnival of Carnivores – Learning About Carnivores In Their Natural Habitats                     

Subject Area(s): Science, Geography, Technology, Applied Learning              

Lesson Summary:

In this lesson, students research different species of meat-eating animals in their natural environments to create a “Carnival of Carnivores” exhibit for their classroom.  

Learning Objectives:

By the end of this lesson, the students will:

§         Speculate on the effects of human settlement on natural wildlife habitats.

§         Examine the ways in which carnivorous animals thrive in their natural environments, using Flathead Valley as an example, by reading and discussing “Where the Bears and Wolverines Prey.”

§         Research various carnivores and their relationships to their natural habitats.

§         Create a “Carnival of Carnivores” exhibit for the classroom.

California Academic Content Standards:

§         Science

·          Life Sciences

·          2.  All organism need energy and matter to live and grow.  As a basis for understanding this concept:

b.        Students know producers and consumers (herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, and decomposers) are related in food chains and food webs and may compete with each other for resources in an ecosystem.

3.     Living organisms depend on one another and their environment for survival.  As a basis for understanding this concept:

a.     Students know ecosystems can be characterized by their living and nonliving components.

b.        Students know that in any particular environment, some kinds of plants and animals survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive at all.

§         Investigation and Experimentation

§         6.     Scientific progress is made by asking meaningful questions and conducting careful investigations.  As a basis for understanding this concept and addressing the content in the other three strands, student should develop their own questions and perform investigations.  Students will:

a.        Differentiate observation from inference (interpretation) and know scientists’ explanations come partly from what they observe and partly from how they interpret their observations.

c.         Formulate and justify predictions based on cause-and-effect relationships.

§         Technology

·          1.0  Basic operations and concepts

o         Students demonstrate a sound understanding of the nature and operation of technology systems.

o         Students are proficient in the use of technology.

·          3.0  Technology productivity tools

o         Students use technology tools to enhance learning, increase productivity, and promote creativity.

o         Students use productivity tools to collaborate in constructing technology-enhanced models, prepare publications, and produce other creative works.

§          Applied Learning

·          7.0   Students will understand information technology tools and techniques.  Students will use information technology to collect, analyze, organize and evaluate information from a variety of sources.

·          8.0   Students will understand the important of teamwork.  Students will work on teams to achieve project objective.

Materials:

In their journals, students respond to the following prompt (written on the board prior to class):  “what challenges do you think wild animals face as humans spread into their habitats?  Do you think that carnivores (meat eaters) and herbivores (plant eaters) face different challenges?  Explain.”

Allow students to share responses and then engage them in a brief discussion of the multiple meanings of the term “carnivore.”  According to the Carnivore Preservation Trust’s Web site (http://www.cptigers.org), carnivores, as a group, are either:  a) members of the order Carnivora, a large group of mammals which includes bears, cats, dogs, and weasels, which are related by common descent and identified by shared structural features in the skull and teeth; or b) animals which can or do eat only meat.  Not all members of the order Carnivora are not solely meat eating, but for the purposes of this lesson students will focus on the second definition.  If time allows, you may wish to explain the etymology of the Latin root “carn-“, meaning “flesh” or “meat”.

As a class, read and discuss “Where the Bears and the Wolverines Prey,” focusing on the following questions:

§         Where is Polebridge?

§         Why do biologists call the valley of the North Fork of the Flathead River “America’s wildest valley”?

§         How do carnivorous animals here differ from those in other American wildlife preserves?

§         What is meant by the term “the lower 48”?

§         How has human settlement affected most of the wild animal habitats in the United States?

§         What are “island populations”?

§         What is an example of “genetic impoverishment”?

§         How have wolves and grizzly bears benefited from life in the Flathead Valley?

§         What do federal and provincial Canadian governments propose to do with Flathead Valley?

§         How has human contact already affected the Flathead Valley?

§         What do supporters of the expansion fear may happen if the Canadian preservation plans are not implemented?

§         How do carnivore populations reflect the general state of a wildlife habitat?

Using all available resources, students research the carnivores mentioned in the article, as well as others (examples might include alligators, hawks, shakes, Tasmanian devils, and toothed whales) to find the following information (one carnivore per student):

§         What is this animal’s habitat/biome?

§         Where can one find this species of animals in the world?

§         What are this animal’s physical features and how do they enhance its ability to survive in its natural habitat?

§         What types of prey does this animal eat?

§         How has this species of animal modified its behavior, way of life, or diet to adapt to encroaching commercial civilization?

§         What actions have been taken towards the conservation of this species or its habitat?

Each student creates an informational poster about the animal species researched, including:

§         A picture of the animal

§         A description of the habitat/biome in which this animal lives (and an illustration or photographic example of this biome, if possible)

§         A world map highlighted to show where one might find this animal

§         The answers to the research questions from the main activity

Posters should be presented orally and then displayed around the classroom as a “Carnival of Carnivores” exhibit.

Extension Activities:

§         If given the opportunity, would you ever visit Flathead Valley?  Why or why not?

§         Which carnivore did you find to be most interesting?  Why?

§         What do you think might be done to prevent further “genetic impoverishment” in carnivorous species?

§         What do you think about the Canadian plan to preserve the area north of the Flathead Valley?

§         How do you think the Canadian and American political leaders will react to the plan to preserve the area north of the Flathead Valley?

Students will be evaluated based on written journal responses, in-class research and presentations of posters for the ”Carnival of Carnivores” exhibit.

Culminating Activity:

Our culminating activity will be to explore the different types of biomes and to create group posters explaining the features of each type.

(This lesson plan was originally written by Alison Zimbalist, The New York Times Learning.  It was modified and adapted for use in a 4^th grade classroom by Cynthia Cirino, New Haven Unified School District, Union City, California.  The NTeQ lesson plan template was modified from its original version, which can be found on the NTeQ website at:  http://www.nteq.com/ )

July 17, 2002 – The New York Times

Where the Bears and the Wolverines Prey:  The Wildest Valley

By Jim Robbins

POLEBRIDGE, Mont. — The paved road, such as it is, peters out here at the last outpost of commercial civilization, a log cabin saloon and barely stocked general store. From here a heavily washboarded gravel road slices through thick pine and spruce forest along the North Fork of the Flathead River, a forgotten corner near Glacier National Park and the Canadian border.

Grizzlies, wolves, wolverines, pine martens, cougars, lynx and 11 other species of predator roam and prey to their hearts' content here. Biologists say it is America's wildest valley.

While the density of predators is part of what makes this valley wild, it is also the fact that carnivores behave the way they would naturally, across a range of different habitats and elevations, rather than having to bend their ways to accommodate and avoid civilization.

"Other places where there are predators get into micromanagement and try to modify behavior," said John L. Weaver, a wildlife researcher with the Wildlife Conservation Society, who recently prepared a report on population densities of five of the predators found here. "But that's a diminishment of wild behavior. Here the animals have a chance to be truly wild."

The snow-tipped mountains and purling, glacier-fed streams and river seem more like Alaska than anything in the Lower 48. The realization that people are not alone at the top of the food chain lends this region a distinct feel, and demands caution for everyday events like a hike in the woods. At night every snapping twig demands attention, while ululating wolf howls, the yip of coyotes and the scream of cougars punctuate the silence. The woods are also thick with predators' meals, moose, deer, elk and rodents.

Bears are so abundant here that there are 65 to 80 of them per 385 square miles, an extremely dense number. That is largely because a grizzly bear can walk across the valley, left alone by humans — a situation almost unheard of in any valleys in the United States outside national parks and Alaska. Four packs of wolves, numbering about two dozen in total, roam the Flathead on each side of the border.

Elsewhere in the West, people have gobbled up so much critical habitat, especially in the fertile valley bottoms, that many predators have either disappeared or are forced to carve out a living on the steep, more marginal slopes of the mountains.

Most other wild reserves in the Lower 48, meanwhile, have become islands surrounded by humans, roads and other trappings, isolating wildlife from others of their kind. Not here. "The difference is that the Flathead is still connected to the Canadian mother ship of wildlife," said Dr. Diane Boyd, who studied the return of wolves to the North Fork from Canada for 18 years for the University of Montana. Now, she manages a private wildlife refuge near Missoula. She described the link to the larger source of wolves in Canada as critical.

Such links have emerged as a premier issue in conservation biology. Island populations have a limited genetic repertoire and may, in the future, face problems adapting to changing environmental conditions without a flow of genes from others of their kind.

The problem of "genetic impoverishment" in these islands may be exacerbated by climatic warming, scientists say. "A species may have to move up slope or north in order to adapt in a warmer climate," said Dr. Reed Noss, a conservation biologist and the chief scientist for the Wildlands Project in Corvallis, Ore., who has been working on a large study of 10 species of carnivores in the West, including the North Fork.

If the gene that aids that adaptation is not present, the population could collapse. "The smaller the genetic population, the greater the chance they won't succeed," Dr. Noss said.

In fact, many of the wolves that have returned to the West and helped recover the Western population have come from Canada, through the abundant wildlands of the North Fork, as the population up north rebounded after hunting was ended in the 1970's. The genes the wolves bring with them are crucial to maintaining diversity, Dr. Boyd said.

Grizzly bears, an endangered species in the United States, also thrive in this valley. "For a noncoastal area, it's as good as it gets," said Bruce McClellan, a biologist with the British Columbia Forest Service in Revelstoke, who has studied bears here since 1978.

Huckleberries, he says, are the biggest reason. They grow in profusion in burned and logged areas. In the fall, bears wallow in the berry patches for days, stripping and gobbling the plump berries. Grizzlies also eat carrion and buffalo berries, and in the spring find succulent vegetation in a broad flood plain.

A wider variety of predator behaviors is seen on the sprawling landscape here than among the same species elsewhere because of the vast amounts of wildness. Long distance migration patterns are still intact. Moose leave the North Fork and traveling more than 50 miles north into Canada.

Wolves are also peripatetic. In 1989, a lone wolf left the Polebridge area and, with a male from Banff National Park, established a new pack 100 miles north.

Grizzly bears sometimes do not hibernate in the winter here, perhaps because of abundant food sources killed by other predators and available all winter, but no one is sure.

Researchers have also witnessed clashes between predators — something known as trespass issues. "It goes on every day," Dr. Boyd said. "They don't know the territorial boundaries of other species. Wolves kill cougars, cougars kill coyotes, wolves kill grizzly cubs, and wolves kill black bears. Wolves kill wolves. It's just part of life."

The North Fork also gives scientists a rare chance to study how predators regulate an ecosystem. When predators disappear, for example, deer and other browsers can grow wildly in number and damage plant populations, wipe out ground nesting birds and cause erosion from overgrazing. But here things are still intact.

The simple formula for assuring the wildness of this valley is wild land. Conservation biologists know that the more human beings in an area, the fewer the carnivores. Some carnivores, for example, will not cross major highways. As people move into a valley, the food source that was once available becomes difficult to get to, and a piece of the survival puzzle is taken away. Take away too many pieces and the carnivores disappear.

Wolves and grizzly bears that disperse out of Yellowstone National Park, for example, have an extremely high mortality rate — there are simply too many sheep, llamas, filled dog-food bowls on porches and other temptations surrounding the park, and when predators get into trouble, they get killed.

Biologists and conservationists want to maintain this wild chunk of America, and keep it from becoming an island ecosystem, with help from the Canadians.

Sometime this summer, conservationists hope the federal and provincial Canadian governments will move to designate a 100,000-acre chunk of the Flathead Valley just north of the United States and adjacent to it, a part of Waterton Park, and set it aside to keep the region from becoming another fragmented, truncated island ecosystem.

"Completing Waterton is a priority," said Bob Peart, executive director of the provincial chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. "It's part of the plan to keep a link between Waterton and Banff-Jasper."

The Glacier/Waterton Park region, in fact, is part of an ambitious proposal by environmentalists to provide a link between a long chain of islands of protected wilderness along the Rockies, from Yellowstone National Park in northern Wyoming to the Yukon, in northern Canada, to head off the continuing isolation of wildlife species.

Though the proposed Waterton park expansion is relatively small, it is important for a couple of reasons. It is adjacent to the already protected Glacier and Waterton parks. It has a fairly steep elevation change, which means it has a variety of habitat niches and so a greater variety of foods. Diversity helps assure survival; if a crop of huckleberries fails one year, buffalo-berries may take up the slack.

That is not to say this region is pristine. Huge clear-cuts interrupt the vast blanket of trees on both sides of the border. But there are just 50 to 80 year-round residents on the American side and no year-round residents in Canada. Supporters fear that without the expansion, developers may try to exploit coal, oil and gas deposits there.

While wildness in this valley is what keeps the carnivores alive, it also makes the study of carnivores difficult. The dirt road that crosses the border used to have a customs station. When a bridge washed out a few years ago, Canadian officials decided not to replace it and the crossing was closed. Now Dr. McClellan has to drive all the way to the other side of the park, "and it takes another day."

"It's a problem," he said. "We used to be able to track bears in an airplane," he said, but since the Sept. 11 attacks, "we can't even fly over."

The logistical challenges are a small price to pay for carnivore security, most experts agree. Abundant carnivore populations, Mr. Weaver said, show that all is right in their natural world.

"They epitomize wilderness," he said. "If you have enough space and security for carnivores, you provide security and space for a lot of other species. Carnivores are canaries in the coal mine in that sense."

Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company