Fish and Wildlife Management
Unit Study
In this day and age of great environmental awareness, understanding how we can manage the wildlife is important. Growth and expansion of humanity's living space is necessary, but we need to be careful to keep the environment and the animals living in it, in mind when urban planning takes place. We also need to remember to leave wild/natural spaces for all to enjoy. This unit takes a look at these issues.
1. Describe the meaning and purposes of fish and wildlife conservation and management.
2. List and discuss at least three major problems that continue to threaten your state's fish and wildlife resources.
3. Describe some practical ways in which everyone can help with the fish and wildlife conservation effort.
4. List and describe five major fish and wildlife management practices used by managers in your state.
5. Construct, erect, and check regularly at least two artificial nest boxes (wood duck, bluebird, squirrel, etc.) and keep written records for one nesting season.
6. Construct, erect, and check regularly bird feeders and keep written records of the kinds of birds visiting the feeders in the wintertime.
7. Design and implement a back-yard wildlife habitat improvement project and report the results.
8. Design and construct a wildlife blind near a game trail, water hole, salt lick, bird feeder, or birdbath and take good photographs or make sketches from the blind of any combination of 10 wild birds, mammals, reptiles, or amphibians.
9. Observe and record 25 species of wildlife. Your list may include mammals, birds, reptiles, or fish. Write down when and where each animal was seen.
10. List the wildlife species in your state that are classified as endangered, threatened, exotic, game species, furbearers, or migratory game birds.
11. Start a scrapbook of North American wildlife. Insert markers to divide the book into separate parts for mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish. Collect articles on such subjects as life histories, habitat, behavior, and feeding habits on all four categories and place them in your notebook accordingly. Articles and pictures may be cut from old discarded newspapers; science, nature, and outdoor magazines; or can be photocopied from other sources. Enter at least 10 articles on mammals, 10 on birds, five on reptiles, and five on fish. Put each animal on a separate sheet in alphabetical order. Include pictures whenever possible.
12. Determine the age of five species of fish from scale samples or identify various age classes of one species in a lake and report the results.
13. Conduct a creel census on a small lake to estimate catch per unit effort.
14. Make a freshwater aquarium. Include at least four species of native plants and four species of animal life, such as whirligig beetles, freshwater shrimp, tadpoles, water snails, and golden shiners. After 60 days of observation, discuss the life cycles, food chains, and management needs you have recognized.
15. Based on what you learned in this unit, design an imaginary community that lives in harmony with the natural environment that surrounds it. OR design green space(s) for a large urban area where nature and humans can live beside one another with the least amount of danger or destruction to both sides.
If you would like to know why you are so tired and how to get the energy back into your life -- even if you've tried *everything* -- then read this entire article.
Are you sleepy, tired, or worn out most of the time?
