OUT IN THE WORLD

Elementary students get up close to the environment

Students get up close and personal with the environment.

Demitre Weeks looks down at the brown glob that sits in the clear petri dish.

She places the dish on the wooden picnic table and grabs a magnifying glass and looks over it.

“I don’t know what this is,” she says as she continues to examine the contents.

But Weeks wasn’t the only one curiously looking at the various oozes, globs and wriggling contents of the various petri dishes. She and her other classmates from Queens Elizabeth Elementary in Kensington set up shop at Scales Pond recently to release salmon fingerlings into the wild.

“I must say the electric fishing was my favourite part of the day,” said seven-year-old Chris Brander.

“The men zapped the fish, but not to hurt them, to get a better look at them so they could study them.”

Dan McNeill and Chris Newell work for the Bedeque Bay Environmental Management Association.

“We collaborated with the Abegweit Biodiversity Hatchery and the Abegweit Conservation Society to implement their Fish Friends program within local schools,” said Newell, the local watershed co-ordinator.

“So in the program, classes are provided salmon eggs and they raise them until the fingerling stage. At that point they are mature enough to be released into the wild.

“It’s a great opportunity for the kids to find out the life cycles of these fish as well as learn about their habitats.”

McNeill is a wildlife habitat co-ordinator with BBEMA.

“The kids got to raise the eggs in tanks and see how they behave and survive. They got to learn what they eat and what they will grow into.”

It’s important to get youth involved in conservation demonstrations, he said. “Most of them are really enthusiastic about what they learn here today.” Newell agreed.

“We can do all the enhancement and biodiversity work we want, but at the end of the day, we won’t be the ones taking care of the ecosystems in 20 years. It will be these kids. We need to instil a passion for nature in them.”

Lilah Pendleton concurred. “It’s extremely important to get kids back into nature. They won’t have the opportunity unless we bring it to them.

“Hopefully this experience will give them appreciation for other species other than themselves.”

“It’s a great opportunity for the kids to find out the life cycles of these fish as well as learn about their habitats.” Dan McNeill

MILLICENT MCKAY/JOURNAL PIONEER Jackson Caseley looks at the salmon fingerlings that he and his classmates at Queen Elizabeth Elementary in Kensington saw hatch and grow in the school’s tanks.

MILLICENT MCKAY/JOURNAL PIONEER Demitre Weeks looks at a brown sample collected from the Dunk River during a recent field trip to the International Children’s Memorial Place. Students from various schools on the Island gathered at the site to release salmon fingerlings into the water.