Endangered Habitats

Endangered Habitats

Earth has many habitats. Habitats are areas in which different kinds of plants and animals live. The desert is a habitat. The rainforest is a habitat. Some habitats are being threatened by the building of roads and homes and industries and by pollution and exploitation. But habitats and animals and humans are all part of the balance of nature. When humans cause habitats to diminish or disappear, all organisms are affected.

Sample some of the following activities to learn more about endangered habitats.

Places To Go | People To See | Things To Do | Teacher Resources | Bibliography

Places To Go

The following are places to go (some real and some virtual) to find out about endangered habitats.

Take a virtual tour of the rainforest and learn about the different kinds of rainforest and why they are important to the welfare of the earth.

Congo Virtual Tour
Take a virtual tour of the Congo.....Okay, it's not the real Congo in Africa. It's an exhibit at the Bronx Zoo. But it's still a great tour of a rainforest environment with a Great Apes Gallery, a Mandrill Forest, an Okapi Jungle, and more. It's full of information about rainforest plants and animals. When you're finished with the tour, choose "Play a Congo Game" from the menu at the top. You'll need the plug-in Shockwave to play.

Visit the American Museum of Natural History. You can tour their online exhibits and learn aboutendangered habitats and animals around the world.

Visit Endangered Africa. Find out about habitat destruction. See a photo gallery of the African landscape and learn about the animals that are impacted by loss of habitat.

Aquarius is an undersea pressurized chamber where scientists study ocean life. You can take a virtual tour that provides apanoramic view of the Aquarius (You will need aplug-in to make the tour work.), and find how scientists are using this remarkable underwater craft to study the endangeredcoral reef habitat.

Visit Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the world's largest coral reef. It is over 1250 miles long. It is not really one big reef but is actually made up of about 2900 separate reefs that are situated very close together.

People To See

Visit Ranger Rick! He's the main raccoon to see to learn about habitats, wildlife, and environmental issues.

Sea Rangers answers questions anything and everything under water. You can also read past questions and answers.

Things To Do

Make a list of human activities that cause habitat destruction.

The world's oceans are in peril from sewage and industrial waste being dumped into them, from garbage, and from over-hunting and over-harvesting. Learn what you can do to help save the oceans.

Coral reefs are in particular danger. According to this site, the anchor from one cruise ship can destroy a coral sea bed area the size of half a football field.

Discover the effects that oil spills have on our oceans.

Find out about Greenpeace and their efforts to protect the environment.

Did you realize that the United States has rainforests, too? It has temperate rainforests in the Pacific northwest. Find out what clearcutting is and how it is endangering this habitat.

Choose your destination to some of the world's most remote and endangered habitats and listen to the sounds of the wildlife at Sound Safari.

Participate in habitat restoration. Plant a tree. National Arbor Day is the last Friday in April, but many states observe Arbor Day on different dates according to their best tree-planting times.

Explore endangered habitats in Madagascar and Borneo.

Find out about the different kinds of forests and what is happening to each of them. According to this site, 95% of the original tropical forests of Bangladesh are gone, only 3% of original forests are remaining in Norway, and in the United States only 15% of original forests are left.

Teacher Resources

Online activities are a listing of internet sites with fun, interesting, and educational tasks attached to each one. (You can learn how to use this WWW Activities tool created by UEN for Utah educators).

Virtual Field Trips are teacher and student-created tours of curricular topics. (You can learn how to use this UEN Virtual Field Trip tool created by UEN for Utah educators).

Wetlands and Riparian Zones

Lesson Plans/Webquests/Activities

Saving Tomorrow'sWorld
Keep Your Eye on the Rainforest
A webquest for 2nd - 6th grade.
A Jungle Journey : Rainforests in Jeopardy
A webquest for 6th grade.

Bibliography

Harlow, Rosie. Nature in Danger. New York : Kingfisher, 1995.
Simon, Noel. Nature in Danger : Threatened Habitats and Species. New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.