Bear Resistant Bins
It’s irritating when an animal upheaves your garbage bin and causes a mess. Manufacturers are making better bear-resistant garbage bins, many of which undergo rigorous testing before entering the marketplace. Using bears to test bins saves other bear’s lives, because when a bear is found in a neighborhood it unfortunately can end up dead.
The Bear-Resistant Products Testing Program works with manufacturers and vendors of bear-resistant products to develop new and improved products and techniques for minimizing conflicts with bears and other predators. For a bin to pass the test, it must remain intact and functional without the bears gaining any of the foods placed inside the containers for a minimum of 30 to 60 minutes, depending on which of the three star passing categories the product makes it into.
The Program has some product test results online, so if you’d like to do some research before you buy a bin, check to see what products passed their test and at what level.
The Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center (GWDC) in Yellowstone is well known for its bear-resistant bin testing. Their website shows that they treat animals humanely, and also support conservation through research and education.
It’s fun watching a bear test a bin! The GWDC has some great photos of bears testing bins, and there’s a video available online at Bear Saver.com that shows a bear in action. There are several other videos online but they loaded very slowly, or had bad lighting, on my computer.
My promotion of this video in no way suggests that I am familiar with or endorse the product. I don’t know the products, so please do your own research before buying one.
Tags: bear, bin, Discovery Center, garbage, Grizzly, product testing, resistant, video, Wolf, Yellowstone
NWPS Fun
Did you know that when you visit a pharmacist, one in every four purchases will have come from a tropical forest? Or that some frogs use their eyes to help push the food down their throat. The Northwest Wildlife Preservation Society wants you to know these and other fun and sometimes amazing facts.
The Kids Corner of the Society’s website is filled with fun and games, and adults as well as kids can enjoy many of them. If you like trivia, or information about some of BC’s most popular animals, you’ll enjoy their Kids Corner.
Before you walk in the woods, you might want to learn what a bear sounds like. NWPS provides a grizzly bear’s grunt, and a cougar’s and a wolf’s growl and howl. The differences between how the gray whale and killer whale sound are notable. And the sea lion’s voices reminded me of when I studied them in the early 1990’s.
If you have kids, you may want to print out the wildlife or bats picture coloring page, and the connect the dots coloring page.
You can also follow the life of a salmon egg, or look at kid’s art.
If you’re motivated enough, the basics of starting a school-based environmental eco-club are also presented.
Tags: eco club, environmental, Kids Corner, Northwest Wildlife Preservation, NWPS, tropical forest, wildlife coloring
Eco-Summer Fun
With children spending more time around home in the summer, it can become a challenge to keep them entertained. Since so many kids like computers, how about helping them to learn about our planet and its wildlife while they have fun?
The most complete online kid friendly information that I’ve found recently belongs to Earth Day Canada. Their EcoKids website has a few online games, and I learned that it’s harder than it looks to catch fish in the wildlife Fishing Frenzy game! Kids (or adults!) can create your own comic strip in Animal Antics, starring Xalibu the Pawer.
The games and info come in 8 different categories, including Wildlife, Climate Change, Water, First Nations, and others.
If getting your environmentally friendly kids to clean their room is a battle, check out the Waste section “I Don’t Want To Clean My Room” that includes a cartoon about recycling what kids find in their room. The final page is a simple game.
In the Have Your Say section, EcoKids ask children “How are you going to enjoy nature this summer?” The answers include getting outside and enjoying the sunshine, and I agree. It’s healthy for kids to get outside, and they learn so much about our world when they explore your garden or nearby park.
Tags: children, Climate Change, computers, Earth Day Canada, EcoKids, summer, Wildlife
Cool Popsicles
With record temperatures making the news around North America, and so many people noticing “it’s Hot!”, efforts to stay cool become a focus.
When temperatures in Washington DC hit 100 degrees F., (38 degrees C.), the Associated Press reported that the National Zoo was feeding homemade popsicles to their animals to try to keep them cool. There’s a video of the panda eating the specially formulated popsicle, together with an update about the panda, online.
If you’d like to watch the Saint Louis Zoo hippos eat a popsicle, check out You Tube. A polar bear at Baltimore’s Maryland Zoo can be seen eating a grape juice, fruit, fish and lard popsicle on metacafe.
For humans, WWF China is selling a popsicle that warns about global warming and animal extinctions, reports Inhabitots. The sticks are topped with a profile of an endangered polar bear, penguin, or sea lion, and include a message that is revealed as the popsicle is eaten.
Stay cool!
Tags: Baltimore, endangered animal, extinctions, global warming, heat wave, hippos, Maryland Zoo, National Zoo, pandas, popsicles, record temperatures, Saint Louis Zoo, WWF China
Fun Water Conservation
Amongst dragon boat and water walking races, Singapore recently launched their International Water Week. To show the effort that some people put into getting drinking water, Arctic natives were shown hacking blocks of ice, and southern women were shown carrying two buckets of water home from a well. School teams competed to build the best and the fastest water rafts using recycled materials including water bottles.
The message behind all the fun is important. If all the world’s water could fit into an 18 litre water bottle, the fresh water available for drinking would only fill three teaspoons, suggests the city of Red Deer, Alberta. So you might think that 1,000 litres of clean North American tap water would cost way more than the price of a one litre bottle of water, at least in Red Deer. Not so.
Perhaps so much water is used for gardens and lawns, and in households, because it’s cheap. Not to worry, though, because you had milk with your breakfast? A dairy cow must drink four litres of water to produce one litre of milk. And then you drove to work? One drop of motor oil can render up to 25 litres of water unsuitable for drinking. Tap leaking? Call a plumber quickly, because not only is it annoying, a tap leaking one drop of water per minute will waste 173 litres of water per week.
Time for a game. The EPA introduces Thirstin in an online Matching Fun Facts Game. He shows up all happy in a rather idyllic looking country scene. Then you are asked to match everyday activities with the amount of water they take. If you get the answer right, Thirstin arrives looking happy. However, if you get it wrong, Thirstin arrives looking sad and carrying a sign that suggests you try again. More details are available if you want to learn more.
Have a happyJuly 4th long summer weekend!
Tags: dragon boat, EPA, game, Singapore, Thirstin, water, Water Week
Friendly Mascots
“Mascot”, according to Wikipedia, means any person, animal, or object thought to bring luck and that represents a group with a common public identity such as a school, professional sports team, society, non profit organization, or zoo. For this Friday File I thought you might like to ‘meet’ a few friendly mascots.
(c) Alison Sheepway / WWF-Canada
Among NGO’s, the World Wildlife Fund’s Panda Bear is likely the best known logo/mascot. Chosen in 1961 when WWF was started, the panda was selected in honor of Chi Chi, who lived at the London Zoo and was the only giant panda in the Western world at that time. You can see how WWF’s logo changed through the years on their website. The Panda’s most recent appearance was lounging in a chair on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill as part of the G8/G20 Global Day of Action, urging world leaders to act on climate change at the G8/G20 summit that is scheduled for Ontario later this month.
Other mascots also carry important messages, such as the blue drop that supports water conservation for the Whatcom Water Alliance. The Alliance is a regional group in Washington state that promotes water conservation by coordinating public information and related conservation activities. It rains a lot in the Pacific Northwest – so the mascot is named Wayne Drop! He has an online photo gallery of his time at Discovery Days.
Just north of the border, the Vancouver Aquarium has a beluga whale mascot named Bee Bop. The Aquarium is proud to be home to several beluga whales, and offer visitors a chance to get close to them. A Beluga Encounter is an interactive experience that offers a view into beluga communication, while visiting the animals in the behind-the-scenes marine mammal habitat.
Mascots sometimes party together. Gordo, the Royal Ontario Museum’s dino mascot, and the Toronto Zoo’s Explorer Bear joined Toronto Public Library’s Dewey Decimal mascot in a public appearance together earlier this Spring. They were announcing the expansion of the popular Sun Life Financial Museum + Arts Pass Program (MAP).
Overseas, mascots can be found in a wide range of animals including gazelles, parrots, cockatoos and other mostly attractive species. The value of flagship species and adorable mascots would make this article too long, so suffice it to say that Time Magazine got it right on in their recent article about why Madagascar needs a mascot.
Do you have a favorite mascot that you’d like everyone to know about?
Tags: animal, Bee Bop, beluga, G8/G20 Global Day, mascot, panda, ROM, Toronto Public Library, Toronto Zoo, Vancouver Aquarium, Wayne Drop, Whatcom Water, Wildlife, WWF
Wildlife Apps & Crittercams
Wildlife apps and cams can be a fun way to tune in and watch animals. Sometimes they are charitable, as in the case of the iGorilla app that allows iPhone and iPad users to watch members of gorilla families in Virunga National Park in Africa. Each app costs $4, and most of the money goes to help the gorillas survive the threats of poaching, civil conflict, deforestation and disease. App users can select a gorilla family and follow them through reports, photos and videos. So reports the BBC.
When finding a reliable list of online wildlife webcams that are all working became harder than it should be, I thought of reversing my search. And yes, there are Crittercams that show you the world from the animal’s point of view. For a donation to the National Geographic of between $26 and $210, you can order a copy of a Crittercam DVD filmed on the back of either an elephant, humpback whale, gray seal, loggerhead turtle, or a white shark. Hopefully you’re reading this in either Canada or the US, because the DVD’s will only be shipped to addresses in those two countries.
Through another page, there’s a short video of a crittercam riding the back of a leopard seal into the waters of Antarctica. As well, you have an opportunity to virtually construct a critter cam.
If you scroll down this page, on the right hand side near the bottom is a link that opens to a virtual tour of the Crittercam Exhibition. It has been touring since August 2007, and will continue to tour around the United States until January 2012. There’s an online virtual tour of the exhibition that is fun, and is like the next best thing to being there.
Tags: crittercam, iGorilla, iPad, iPhone, leopard seal, National Geographic, Virunga National Park, wildlife app
Conservation Quotes
Have you ever looked up wildlife conservation quotes online? Leading quotation websites include conservation and the environment. Here are a few of my favorites from this week’s readings:
From the Quote Garden :
Don’t blow it – good planets are hard to find. – Quoted in Time
We never know the worth of water till the well is dry. – Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732
In light of the current oil spill, a controversial challenge from Greenpeace seems to ring loudly: It wasn’t the Exxon Valdez captain’s driving that caused the Alaskan oil spill. It was yours. – Greenpeace advertisement, New York Times, 25 February 1990.
Sites like BrainyQuote also have some good wildlife conservation quotes.
I feel like I’m nothing without wildlife. They are the stars. I feel awkward without them. – Bindi Irwin
The quicker we humans learn that saving open space and wildlife is critical to our welfare and quality of life, maybe we’ll start thinking of doing something about it. – Jim Fowler
My belief is that what comes across on the television is a capture of my enthusiasm and my passion for wildlife. – Steve Irwin. If you’re a Steve Irwin fan, BrainyQuote has 37 quotes by him online. One of his most well known quotes is: I believe sustainable use is the greatest propaganda in wildlife conservation at the moment.
Do you have any favorite wildlife conservation quotes that you’d like to share with this blog’s readers?
Tags: Bindi Irwin, Brainy Quote, Conservation, Greenpeace, Jim Fowler, Quote Garden, Steve Irwin, Thomas Fuller, Wildlife, wildlife quotes
