Conserving Curiosity: Project Webfoot Wrap-up 2018

This is a guest blog from Duck’s Unlimited Canada (DUC) summer student Sarah Wilkins. Sarah is a 3rd year Biology student in the Faculty of Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. She loves hiking, camping and botany. Follow her instagram @newfoundlandroots for beautiful photos of native Newfoundland wildflowers. This is Sarah's second summer with Ducks Unlimited Canada.

Tuesday, June 26^th was a good day weather-wise if you were a duck. Even though the school year was coming to an end in three days, it was four degrees outside and the rain had been falling heavily since the day before. If you weren’t a duck, it was the type of weather that doesn’t entice you to explore outdoors. However, for Ducks Unlimited Canada (DUC) and SAM Staff it was a great day to shovel up a peat core and bring the outside in for the grade 5 and 6 students at Brookside Intermediate.

A peat core from Brookside Intermediate Bog

Brookside students squeezing peat!

Brookside Intermediate is located in the SAM member community of Portugal Cove-St. Philip’s , and it was the final school that we visited wrapping up two months of wetland field trips and presentations to grades 4’s, 5’s, and 6’s across the province. Although the weather was gloomy, encouraging the students to dig their hands into the chunk of peat and squeeze the water out of a handful of peat moss, gave the room a cheerful atmosphere.

It’s always an amazing experience to deliver environmental education to the students of SAM member communities. They learn the reasons why conserving wetlands and the Boreal Forest are so important and they’re always interested in what they can do to help protect the environment. When a community takes the step to sign a municipal habitat stewardship agreement, it ensures that the next generation will have a healthy environment to enjoy and we can confidently tell students that their community is taking steps to conserve, enhance and restore Newfoundland and Labrador's wildlife habitat!

Random Island Academy critter dipping in Clarenville, June 2018 

Prior to our presentation at Brookside Intermediate, DUC and SAM staff delivered Project Webfoot field trips to four SAM member communities: Stephenville Crossing, Springdale, Lewisporte, and Hawke’s Bay . In addition, Project Webfoot was delivered to other SAM communities by partner organizations including: Happy Valley - Goose Bay (thanks to Healthy Waters Labrador, GrandFalls - Windsor (thanks to Corduroy Brook Enhancement Association), St.John's (thanks to the Fluvarium) and Indian Bay (thanks to the staff at the Indian Bay Ecosystem Corporation).

Project Webfoot is Ducks Unlimited Canada’s elementary school program where students explore local wetlands and discover what slithers, swims, hops, and flies in their backyard! The program is directly linked to grades 4 to 6 curriculum and offers students a chance to apply the material they’ve learned in the classroom to a real-world setting.

American black ducks at Corner Brook Marsh

During the field trip, students participate in games that teach them what a wetland is, how to identify the different types of wetlands in Newfoundland & Labrador, and the many values and ecosystem services wetlands offer people, wildlife, and the environment. Students are also advised on how to properly use binoculars, they search for aquatic invertebrates, and have the freedom to make their own discoveries and observations.

Children are natural born scientists. As infants, their first words are to help them identify the people and things in the world around them and later in childhood their inquisitive nature leads them to touch, smell, and observe things they aren’t familiar with. These childhood explorations are important for how we make predictions in the future and adjust our reactions to the environment.

So, if children are natural scientists then why are some kids not interested in science? Why do they lose their innate curiosity as they get older?

Learning how to bird-watch with some soon to be 'Bird-Nerds' at Corner Brook Marsh, June 2018

Apparently, the key is how we teach science. A study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) wanted to look at how teaching affects exploration and discovery and did so by giving 4-year-olds a new toy. The new toy had four tubes attached to it that each did something different. One group of students were presented with the toy by a scientist who claimed she had found the toy on the ground and acted very surprised when she pulled one tube and the toy made a squeaking sound. 

A second group of students were presented with the toy by the same scientist who informed them that she had just gotten a new toy and wanted to show them how it worked and deliberately made it squeak. When both groups of kids were given the toy to play with, they all repeated the squeaking action they had observed but the second group of kids quickly became bored of the toy and put it aside. In contrast, the first group of kids continued to play with it long after the second group had stopped and discovered the hidden functions of the other tubes.

Kids lose their sense of exploration when we teach them facts of what we already know instead of the process and importance of their discovery. The secret to engaging kids in science is to take advantage of their natural inquisitiveness and instead of getting caught up in the “what”, we should focus on the “why” and “how”.

Critter dipping for macro invertebrates! June 2018

Dragonfly nymphs from Corner Brook Marsh, June 2018

Their moments of discovery are the best part of my job! Whether the students are yelling out to you because they’ve just caught a huge dragonfly nymph or the whole class is falling completely silent because they’ve just caught sight of a bird, close encounters with nature leave lifelong impressions on children. These moments open the door to a lifetime of curiosity, a desire to learn, and compassion for the natural world around us.

As adults, we are gatekeepers to the natural world and we often try to over protect children instead of  building their connection to the environment. This connection is even more important in our world of social media, tablets, and video games. I entered the field of conservation biology because I wanted to share my passion for nature that I learned as a child with future generations.

By protecting habitat through Municipal Habitat Stewardship Agreements we can ensure that future generations have the same species and landscapes that are part of our lives and we leave them the most important legacy: the opportunity to find wonder and conserve curiosity.