Creating Corridors Objective: Grade: 5 Students will learn about extinction events, biodiversity, and how wildlife Subject Areas: corridors can enhance critical habitat. Life Science, Economics, Social Studies Materials • 3 x 5 cards of 4 different the park boundary discussing, Skills: colors . Every student • time piece and a whistle predicting, modeling, needs one of each color. • rope, boards, and fabric observing, role playing, • pictures of fragmented to make obstacles and critical thinking habitat and local or corridors exotic wildlife Duration: 1 hour • a large area clear of tables • tape or flagging to mark Connections: social studies, environment, Standards resource management Strands: Excellence in Environmental Education Guidelines Strand 1 — Questioning and Analysis Skills: C) Collecting Information: Learners are able to locate and collect information about the environment and Vocabulary environmental topics. F) Working with models and simulations: Learners biodiversity understand that relationships, patterns, and processes can be represented by models. niche Stand 2.3 —Humans and Their Societies: C) Political and economic systems: Learners understand that government and economic systems exist because people extinct living together in groups need ways to do things such as provide for needs and wants, maintain order, and manage conflict. D) Global Connections: Learners disruption understand how people are connected at many levels—including the global genes level—by actions and common responsibilities that concern the environment. Strand 2.4 —Environment and Society: C) Resources: Learners understand the gene pool basic concepts of resource and resource distribution. Strand 3.2—Decision-Making and Citizenship Skills: B) Evaluating the need public lands for citizen action: Learners are able to think critically about whether they believe action is needed in particular situations and whether they believe they should be habitat fragmentation involved. range California State Educational Standards: extinct Life Sciences 3a: Students know ecosystems can be characterized by their living and nonliving components. endangered Investigation and Experimentation (I and E) 6c: Students will formulate and justify predictions based on cause-and-effect relationships. critical habitat corridors Background live in isolation. They coexist and interact with an extinct organism is its role in the Gone Forever? with one another within a particular ecosystem. If a species has a primary role, ecosystem. Each species has a particular like pollination, and is no longer there, xtinction events are not unknown niche or role in an ecosystem. A niche is the ecosystem can be disrupted or even Ethroughout the history of life. how an organism makes a living in order collapse. Evidence shows mass extinctions have to survive. For instance, flies and bees happened periodically and somewhat pollinate flowers. As they fly from plant Using the example from above, if insects suddenly following a large scaled to plant they carry pollen with them. like bees and flies become extinct, so do catastrophic event like an asteroid Pollination needs to happen in order for the flowers that depend on them and any impact. As a matter of fact, over 90% fertilization to occur. Many plants depend animals that depended on the flowers. of all species that have ever inhabited on insect pollinators to reproduce. If a This is where biodiversity comes in. our planet are now extinct. Today, an species cannot successfully reproduce, When there are multiple species present, extinction event is happening again, but the population will eventually die out or often one species can fill a similar niche this time it is different. The catastrophic become extinct. Once a species becomes to another species. Therefore, biodiversity event is being caused by the actions of extinct, it is gone forever. Gone along can deter large disruptive events and modern humans coupled with climate change. According to a comprehensive report put out by the MA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment), humans have changed most ecosystems beyond Local recognition. What happens next, is up to us. Connection E.O. Wilson, a famous American Humboldt Redwood State Park naturalist, has been studying biodiversity The single largest area of protected redwoods in the world is for over 30 years is a leading expert. He Humboldt Redwoods State Park (HRSP) located along the Eel River. warns that the rate of extinction is higher The park encompasses over 53,000 acres and contains the entire Bull Creek watershed. The ancient redwoods in this park are some of today than it has ever been before. He the most majestic and were highly threatened during construction even predicts that we are losing species of the redwood highway. This is the reason why Save The Redwoods 10,000 times faster today compared to League began a legacy of redwood forest protection inaugurating the background rate of approximately the first protected redwood grove here in 1921. 100 species per year, particularly in HRSP is home to many sensitive plants and animals tropical regions. species like the Humboldt marten, ringtail cats and Coho salmon. Other places inside the park, however, are divided by Highway Biodiversity can be defined many ways. 101, Avenue of the Giants, Honeydew Road and other roadways. One definition is the total number of Barriers besides roads within the park include trails, beaches and species living within a certain ecosystem. campgrounds used by humans. For instance, about 150 bird species and Because of its remoteness, size and proximity to the King 400 different plant species live in the Range NCA (another sizable protected area southwest of the park), action has been taken to create a wildlife corridor connecting the King Range National Conservation Area two places. This idea has been called the Redwoods to the Sea (NCA). In Costa Rica, a country in the Wildlife Corridor and became one step closer to reality in 2008 tropics, about 850 birds species and over when Save the Redwoods League deeded the BLM (Bureau of Land 9,000 plant species have been identified. Management) 216 acres of redwood and Douglas fir habitat within This means that Costa Rica has a higher the gap. Save the Redwoods League has worked with private land biodiversity of plant and bird species owners and has partnered with public agencies and environmental compared to the King Range NCA. organizations to help create this vital link. Since 1999, it has helped Biodiversity is important for many protect 10,000 acres within this corridor. reasons. First of all, organisms do not Lost Coast Environmental Education Resource 2 prevent ecological collapse. A disruption Habitat is fragmented when isolated they lived. Eons of evolutionary history is something that causes confusion and patches of land and or water result from disappear as well. Humans may never can throw a system into disorder. resources being disrupted. Isolated know the true value of the species that patches reduce the ability for wildlife to are lost. Another reason biodiversity is interbreed, find food and move into new important is because every species is territories. According to Reed Noss, edi- Most evidence shows that the number unique. Every species has accumulated tor of the journal Conservation Biology, one reason for species decline is habitat changes throughout its evolution. habitat fragmentation is one of the most destruction. As people clear forests and These evolutionarily changes are coded serious threats facing conservation today. grasslands for agriculture, habitat is within its genes. Genes are portions He claims that large carnivores and her- lost. When places become too polluted of DNA that code for particular traits bivores may need millions of acres of pre- for living things to exist, habitat is lost. or behaviors. The combination of served land. These animals like mountain When people build homes, roads or different genes within a population is lions and wolves can have normal ranges shopping malls, wildlife is pushed out. called a gene pool. Through sexual that extend hundreds of miles. A range Fifty years ago, people living in and near reproduction, genes are reshuffled is the total area that a species occupies. the King Range NCA, were likely to see producing a unique genetic sequence animals that are rare today, like martens, for every individual (unless they are In nature, nothing is static. Things are badgers and green sturgeon. As species identical twins) within that population. constantly changing. Animals and plants become rare they become endangered. Mutations are another important immigrate into new areas and emigrate Endangered plants and animals are source of variation. Populations with a out of existing ones. The ability to move those whose numbers are so low, they large gene pool are healthier because from place to place helps wildlife survive. are threatened with extinction. Land set as populations become smaller, their Habitat fragmentation makes mobility aside to help prevent endangered species sequences become more alike. more difficult. from becoming extinct is called critical Species that have a shallow gene pool habitat. (small population), don’t have a lot of variation and may end up carrying Uniting Nature As humans become more aware of genetic defects, diseases and suffer from the threats imposed on animals and inbreeding depression. By maintaining plants, steps are taken to save them. genetic diversity, populations have a Today, many parks and preserves have There are two main ways of solving lesser chance of getting harmful genetic human development like towns, freeways, the problem of local extinctions within diseases or losing genetic fitness. and golf courses immediately outside protected areas. The first is to increase their boundaries. These human centered the size of the protected area and the One way habitat, and therefore places create barriers for wildlife. Park second is to establish wildlife corridors. biodiversity, is conserved is through the planners and managers of protected Corridors connect fragmented lands acquisition of public lands like parks, lands have in recent decades been shaken together reducing the number of barriers.