Geoguide/tigers
Classroom Ideas: Ninth-Twelfth Grade
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Triage for Tigers?

OVERVIEW

Long feared, sometimes beloved, but always viewed in awe, tigers now hover near the brink of extinction. Three of the eight tiger subspecies (the Caspian, Bali, and Javan) have already vanished forever. The remaining five subspecies (Bengal, South China, Indochinese, Sumatran, and Siberian) persist in dwindling patches of habitat. Illegal hunting—poaching—of tigers and destruction of the forests in which they live threaten to erase tigers from the wild.

Countless other plant and animal species share the tiger’s plight. The scale and pace of extinctions occurring today has few if any precedents in earth’s long history. What can an individual person do to stem the tide?

Have your students explore ways that people can help protect threatened species. Familiarize your students with the complexities of trying to save the tiger. Then identify endangered species near your school and find ways to promote their survival.

Connections to the curriculum: geography, science, social studies

Connections to the National Geography Standards:

Standard 1: “How to use maps and other geographic representations, tools, and technologies to acquire, process, and report information from a spatial perspective”
Standard 8: “The characteristics and spatial distribution of ecosystems on Earth’s surface”
Standard 14: “How human actions modify the physical environment”
Standard 16 “The changes that occur in the meaning, use, distribution, and importance of resources”

Time: Three hours minimum

Materials required:

• copies of the December 1997 NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC articles “Making Room for Wild Tigers” and “Sita: Life of a Wild Tigress” and the March 1995 article ³Dead or Alive: The Endangered Species Act
  
• the National Geographic book America’s Endangered Species: The Company We Keep by Douglas H. Chadwick and Joel Sartore, published in 1996 (suggested)
• a computer with Internet access to examine Geoguide/tigers and Sanctuary: U.S. Wildlife Refuges (www.nationalgeographic.com/refuges)
• maps of a park, state or national forest, or wildlife refuge near your school.

Purpose:

• Compare threats to tiger survival in Asia and threats to plant and animal life near your school.
• Devise a strategy to help promote species survival.

Objectives:

Students will

• review the primary threats to tiger survival;
• identify several endangered species found near your school;
• research the reasons that local species are endangered;
  
• devise a strategy for monitoring a local endangered or threatened species, increasing public awareness, and otherwise helping to promote its survival.

SUGGESTED PROCEDURE

Opening:

1. Read the articles on tigers in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC and share them with the class. Explore Geoguide/tigers. If your students have Internet access, have them explore the online feature as well.
2. Hold a class discussion about the complex pressures on earth’s remaining wild tiger populations. In the broadest sense, these include poaching and habitat loss, but each of these has numerous economic and social causes. Challenge your students to understand the motives of poachers in countries where other income is hard to come by, and of land developers and farmers in places with crowded cities and large populations to feed.
3. Relate the discussion to similar needs and forces in your own community.

1. Distribute maps of your regions to groups of students. Have students identify tracts of land where wild species might exist in abundance. Such tracts might include nature preserves, parks, state and national forests, university research stations, and wildlife refuges. For a complete list of wildlife refuges in the United States see Sanctuary: U.S. Wildlife Refuges.
2. As a research project, have the student groups identify and contact people familiar with these relatively undeveloped lands: park rangers, forest managers, land trust officers, or university faculty. They should interview these people to learn about endangered or threatened species living on the land. Students could invite a few of the people they interview to come discuss the plants and animals on these lands with your class. If convenient, student groups or the entire class could also make a field trip to examine the sites.
3. Pick one of the endangered or threatened species near your school and divide your class into three teams: a monitoring team, a rescue team, and a public-awareness team.
4. Have the monitoring team devise methods for monitoring the status of the species on a tract of land in your community. This might include counting reports of sightings (appropriate to an animal that’s rarely seen), or counting the number of individuals on a set piece of land (suitable for an endangered plant). Remind students on this team that there should be an initial assessment to determine the state of the species and then ongoing monitoring to observe declines or increases.
5. Have the rescue team devise a strategy for helping the species survive and increasing its numbers. This might include protections, such as lower speed limits on roads through the habitat of an endangered animal, or a greenhouse breeding program for an endangered plant.
6. Have the public-awareness team devise a strategy for informing people in your community about the imperiled plant or animal living nearby. This might include a press release sent to newspapers, radio stations, and television stations; a press conference in your school; a short video sequence on the species by students for a community-access cable channel; or even a Web site prepared by the group.

Closing:

1. Dedicate a class period to discussing the various team strategies. Do the plans proposed by one group mesh with the plans of another? Will increased public awareness help an endangered species or—by drawing people to the site where it lives—actually promote its demise?
2. Revisit the discussion of endangered tigers. What insights has your class gained by examining a species near home? Are most of the fundamental issues universal? If so, how must communities and countries work together to preserve the world’s biodiversity?

Suggested student assessment:

• team presentations
  

Extending the lesson:

• If practical, have your class carry out the strategies proposed by the monitoring, rescue, and public-awareness teams.
  
• Have students devise and carry out a public-awareness campaign in both your school and community about the plight of tigers.

Aaron Doering of Century High School in Rochester, Minnesota, contributed classroom ideas for this Geoguide.