Wildlife Trade: Affecting Animals and Their Ecosystems

International Fund for Animal Welfare’s (IFAW) Animal Action Education is providing teachers with hands-on, inquiry based lessons on animals, their adaptations and good citizenship for grades K-8. Students learn about how commercial wildlife trade is one of the biggest threats to wildlife. Animal preservation lesson plans, printables and teaching resources, available at We Are Teachers: http://ow.ly/UBN1w

Use of Animals in Trade:
Entertainment
Fashion
Decoration
Traditional Medicine and Religion
Pets
Food



Video (3rd-5th) featured above: http://ow.ly/UBPTU

Students investigate: “Why do people trade in wildlife?” and “How do our choices as consumers affect animals?” They discuss why people would want wildlife products? These products do not benefit the animal. How would they benefit humans? They also explore how wild animals are sold as pets and taken from their natural habitat. Students are provided with a free magazine. Student magazine http://ow.ly/UBPPg

Students learn that not only is wildlife trade affecting certain animal species, it can affect an entire ecosystem! Grades 3-5 Lesson plans http://ow.ly/UBPJK

Some of the Inquiry Lessons featured in the pack:
Dog Sniffing Scavenger Hunt: Dogs are used to detect wildlife products. In this activity students put their nose to the test, searching around the room for an onion hidden in a clean sock.
Science Meets Art- Animal Diagram and Poem: Students research an animal and investigate how its features help it survive. Then they write verses for adaptation poems provided by IFAW.
Ecosystem Cups: Students stack cups and create an ecosystem pyramid. They take cups away and discover how the removal of one animal can cause an ecosystem to fall apart.
Geography Project- An Exotic Pet's Journey: Students collaborate in groups and use a map's scale (provided) to determine how many miles an animal travelled from its home. Students compare an animal's natural environment to it's life as a pet. They write down what humans cannot provide wildlife animals with if they were kept as pets.
Keep Wild Animals Wild Informative Comic: After reading a comic about the use of sea turtle shells as hair clips, students are encouraged to create their own comic about an animal of their choice.
Pet Store Skits: Students take on one of these characters: store owner, customer who wants to buy a wild animal for a pet, a member of the student Animal Welfare Club, a wild animal that the store sells, and a reporter. The skits tell the story of what happens when the customer comes into the store to buy the animal but runs into a protest being covered by the local news.
Design a Pamphlet: In pairs, students make their own pamphlets to persuade others that keeping or trading in wild animals as pets has negative effects for the animals, people, and the environment.
Culminating Project: Students figure out a way to get the word out about wildlife trade: mural, assembly, video (anything they can think of)

Keep Wild Animals Wild is available at three levels of instruction.

Students ages 5 to 7 (grade K-2) are introduced to the concepts of what makes an animal wild and how people can observe and appreciate wildlife responsibly.

o   Lesson plans http://ow.ly/UBNGE

o   Student magazine http://ow.ly/UBNMW

o   K-2 Video http://ow.ly/UBPDG

Students ages 8 to 10 (grade 3-5) learn about wildlife trade, how it is relevant to them, and how they can take action to help protect wild animals from wildlife trade.

o   Lesson plans http://ow.ly/UBPJK

o   Student magazine http://ow.ly/UBPPg

o   3-5 video http://ow.ly/UBPTU

Students ages and 11 to 14 (grade 6-8) also learn about wildlife trade and its relevance to their world.

o   Lesson plans http://ow.ly/UBQ0r

o   Student magazine http://ow.ly/UBQ5r

o   Classroom poster http://ow.ly/UBQdu

o   6-8 video http://ow.ly/UBQjl