Strike While the Iron is Hot!
February 27, 2008
By Lindsey Konkel, SOC Intern

I have observed over the past few months that among students visiting the SOC, Metalsmithing is one of the favorite classes. Even the most distracted children sit still and watch attentively as their piece of metal heats up in that white-hot, sparking coal fire. Metalsmithing is one of my favorite classes to teach, because it gives me the opportunity to discuss with the students the environmental impacts of burning coal and the difference between renewable and non-renewable resources.

When I asked a class once what coal, a fossil fuel, is made of, one kid raised his hand and said, “crushed up pieces of dead dinosaurs.” He was on the right track. Coal and other fossil fuels are composed of dead organic material, living things that were buried and crushed under great heat and pressure for millions of years.

Most coal beds that exist today were formed under a unique set of circumstances that existed during the Carboniferous period, some 350 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs roamed the earth. At this time in the Earth’s history, lowland swamps and forests covered much of North American and Europe. Large amounts of wetland vegetation died and fell into the swampy surroundings. Because swamps normally do not contain much oxygen, the plant material that falls in does not completely decompose. Instead, it accumulates and gradually turns into peat, a loose brown mass of organic matter in which leaves and twigs and other plant parts can still be recognized. Over millions of years, peat may undergo chemical transformations as it is compressed into coal, a carbon-rich sedimentary rock.

After the kids hear this, they want to know, if coal and other fossil fuels are made from natural and ongoing processes in the Earth, why are these resources considered non-renewable?

There are swamps all over the modern world, what made the conditions during the Carboniferous unique? Some scientists hypothesize that since the first conifers emerged in the Carboniferous, no animals or bacteria had yet evolved ways to decompose the wood of these large, bark-bearing trees when they fell. This could have contributed to the massive build-up of dead organic matter collecting in the swamps during the Carboniferous. These conditions no longer exist on Earth, as animals and bacteria have now evolved ways to decompose lignin in dead trees. ‘Renewable’ is also a relative term. We usually consider renewable resources to be ones that can regenerate within a generation or two. Wood is an example of a renewable resource, because it takes trees decades to grow, not millions of years.

When I ask the kids what coal burning does to the environment, I usually get some pretty savvy answers. Coal adds carbon dioxide and sulfur gas to the atmosphere of course! The first contributes to global warming, the second to acid rain. However, when I ask the kids what they can do to use less coal in their daily lives, I get a lot of blank stares. “But we don’t burn coal in our houses,” they say.

Though they may not have coal forges in their homes, they all have electricity, and a percentage of the energy and electricity that we use in our homes comes from burning coal. When I put it in these terms, simple solutions usually present themselves in the students’ minds. Turn the lights and TV off when you aren’t in the room! Take shorter showers! Turn the thermostat down two degrees when you aren’t at home! The decision to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy needs to occur at the governmental level, but there are easy ways for us to reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere by conserving fossil fuels in our everyday lives. Always remember the three R’s – Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

 

Close Encounter with a Kingfisher

February 8, 2008

By Lindsey Konkel

I came to the School of Conservation this past fall to teach, but also to learn. I especially wanted to learn more about the gaping hole in my education as a biologist – birds. However, I never imagined that I would be skinning them. With the help of Hannah Suthers, a long time bird bander, biologist, and founder of the Princeton Skinners, a group that works to prepare scientific collection skins for the Princeton University Biology Museum, several members of the School of Conservation staff worked to prepare skins last week to begin our own ornithological teaching collection.

Though it is illegal to kill or capture migratory and songbirds in the United States under the Migratory Bird Act, as an educational institution, the School of Conservation has a scientific permit to collect and salvage birds that are found dead. Most of the birds that we skinned died as a result of flying into building and car windows. Their bodies remain in near-perfect shape; birds that fly into windows usually die from brain concussions and show little sign of external trauma.

My bird was dark grey with a white collar around the neck, crested feathers on its head, and white markings on its body. Using a field guide, I identified it as a Belted Kingfisher. The rusty brown band across its chest and on the sides of its belly suggested that it was a female; unlike most North American bird species, female Kingfishers are more colorfully decorated than the males. In addition to my Kingfisher, we skinned a Hermit Thrush, a Scarlet Tanager, a Red Crossbill, a Blue Jay, a Cedar Waxwing, and a Sharp-shinned Hawk, a total of seven birds. We tried to represent some of the avian diversity in eastern North America.

When skinning a bird for scientific collection, a necropsy is usually performed to determine the stomach contents, sex, and when and how the bird may have died. The necropsy was my favorite part of the process – it revealed some very interesting findings about our birds. My Kingfisher had a belly full of crayfish claws and exoskeleton, indicating what it may have eaten at its last meal. There was also bruising under the skin of its right shoulder. This probably occurred when it flew into a window. In the Waxwing’s stomach, we found winter grape (Vitis cinerea) seeds, which confirmed that the bird died in the fall. In the spring and summer they feed more on insects. We pulled an intestinal parasite out of the Hawk’s stomach that we preserved alongside the Hawk to show students.

Because birds cannot be differentiated on the basis of external genitalia, it is important also to sex them during the necropsy. All birds have a cloaca, which comes from Latin and means “sewer,” an all-purpose opening for the intestinal, urinary, and genital tracts. With the help of a dissecting scope, I was able to identify my Kingfisher’s ovary, proving that it was indeed a female. I say ovary instead of ovaries, because unlike mammals, most female birds only have the left ovary and oviduct, presumably for flight economy. Accipiters, birds of prey like our Sharp-shinned Hawk, are an exception and have two.

Eight hours later, after eviscerating and removing all soft tissue from the birds (including the brain and eyeballs), we stuffed the body cavities with cotton balls and sewed the birds onto Popsicle sticks for easy handling. In order to make the birds as lifelike as possible, we fluffed and smoothed feathers with an old toothbrush and then finally pinned the specimens to cardboard to dry.

Our new teaching collection will provide students of ornithology at the School of Conservation the rare opportunity to turn these birds over in their hands, to observe them up close, at eye level, from every angle. Hopefully, by handling these prepared skins, our students will begin to gain a greater appreciation for the avian world and our connection to it.

 

Got Milk?
By Lindsey Konkel, SOC Intern

There is a hollowed-out, fallen log on the SOC campus that every student of black bear ecology visits. One winter, a female black bear and her cubs hibernated here.

The students are always surprised to hear that female black bears give birth in the middle of winter, while hibernating. I too was pretty amazed when I first found this out. Lactation can be quite a costly proposition! How does the mother bear survive through the winter nursing her cubs while she is not eating herself?

I grew up in Wisconsin, where the license plates proclaim America’s Dairyland. In my mind, images of milk are often associated with dairy products, but in the realm of animal nutrition, there is more to milk than Holsteins and milking machines.

Milk comes from cows, yes, but also from other animals – black bears, dolphins, horses, lions, and bats to name a few. In fact, all mammal mothers lactate – lactation, or milk production is a defining characteristic of mammals.

Lactation, which is unique to mammals, provides a method of transfer of nutrients from mothers to their youngsters. When mammals are born, they are quite dependent on their mothers, having not yet developed the structures necessary, such as teeth, to forage or hunt like adults of their species. Milk, composed of sugar, fat, protein, and water, gives the infant energy and helps it grow. Transfer of nutrients via milk allows for a delay in maturity, a longer growth period in which the infant stays with and learns from the mother.

Though mammals are united by the act of lactation, not all milk is the same; the composition of milk, including the amount of sugar, fat, protein, and water can vary greatly. Throughout the course of mammalian evolution, nursing strategies and milk composition have evolved to match the life-history of different mammalian species.

What does this have to do with our black bear mother and her cubs? A female black bear with nursing cubs rarely leaves the den to forage over the winter. She relies instead on stores of fat and energy that she has accumulated over the previous seasons. This poses a conflict. The female must provide enough energy-rich milk for her cubs to survive over the winter while at the same time retaining enough energy for herself, to keep her own organ systems working properly. Organs such as the brain require simple sugars like glucose to function.

Evolution’s solution is simple yet elegant. Mother bears produce high-fat milks that are low in sugar. This enables the female to retain stores of readily available simple sugars while at the same providing her cubs with energy-rich milk, enabling them to pack on the pounds. Weighing only a half a pound to a pound when they are born, bear cubs need to grow quickly in order to survive the winter. Milk is an evolved food, a compromise between what the mother can give and what the infant needs.

There are many other mammals besides bears living in the forest. Each species produces a slightly different milk that reflects its limitations and lifestyle. For example, there are many small rodents such as mice or voles living in the forest. Like black bears, these mammals tend to produce very dense, energy-rich milks, but for a different reason. Small species are limited in how much they can consume by the size of their stomachs; high-fat milk allows for the transfer of a large amount of energy in a small amount of milk.

Deer tend to fall on the opposite end of the spectrum, producing milk that is very low in fat. A fawn is rarely seen far from its mother’s side and is allowed to nurse several times a day. Because fawns grow slowly and nurse often, there is no rush for the mother to transfer large amounts of fat to the infant; the milk is dilute, containing mostly water and sugars.

Though New Jersey’s black bear and deer populations are doing quite well respectively, perhaps too well some would suggest, the study of milk composition has become an important component of many wildlife conservation projects. If the concern for a particular species is poor reproductive success or high infant mortality, then looking at milk is an obvious place to start.

Creativity Cannot be Discounted!
By
Lindsey Konkel, SOC Intern

I am standing on the barricaded road watching a group of sixth graders, new arrivals at the School of Conservation. They are on the clock – 12 minutes to complete their challenge. Standing on a fallen log, six inches off the ground, they are engaged in a lively debate about how to reverse their order on the log without anyone falling off. Their current strategy is not working - over and over again, they try to squeeze past one another, everyone remaining standing. Inevitably, before they finish, someone falls off the log.

They look to their teacher for advice, but her lips are sealed – this is a challenge for them to figure out as a group, on their own. The group becomes frustrated; they are running out of time. People start shouting to be heard. One quiet boy at the back of the line suggests they try leap-frogging over each other to cross the log; his idea falls on deaf ears. After a few more goes at the old way, the quiet boy speaks up again. “That idea will never work,” a few say. Eventually, the rest of the group persuades the nay-sayers try leap-frogging. Excitement builds as the team begins to make progress, working together toward a goal. Finally, in the last minute they are cooperating.

Most groups of students will have this experience at some point during their stay at the School of Conservation. The Action Socialization Experiences or ASEs as described, are a series of unique group challenges that stress communication and problem solving within the group. Students quickly learn that effective group communication involves speaking and listening, brainstorming and discussing. Cooperation and team building are the obvious goals of these exercises, but I have been asking myself, how else do ASEs enrich a visiting student’s environmental education experience?

I believe the answer lies in the quiet boy or girl with the seemingly eccentric idea that finally speaks up. Creative thinking is a valuable part of this exercise and benefits both the individual and the group. So often, groups will stick with the same old strategy, even though it has proven inefficient time and again. Why? Maybe it is easier, more convenient than trying to think of a new plan – we are creatures of habit after all. ASEs are valuable because they encourage students to think outside the box to solve challenges, to engage their brains! Believe it or not, thinking can actually be fun.

So what does creative problem solving have to do with the environment? There are a lot of environmental issues on the table right now: pollution, global warming, and species extinctions to name a few. When it comes to addressing these issues as a local/national/global community, we seem to procrastinate as long as possible. We keep trying to squeeze past each other on that skinny log, and we keep falling off. It will require a lot of creative thinking and problem solving on all of our parts to figure out a way for us to live sustainably in nature. Creative thinkers, let’s share our ideas, let’s communicate and work together – we are on the clock.

Using Your Senses

by Lindnsey Konkel, SOC Intern

After spending countless hours in the windowless nutrition research lab handling animal milk and fecal samples at the National Zoo in Washington, DC this summer, I decided it was time for a change of scenery. Labor Day weekend, I made my way here, to the School of Conservation, to begin my career as an environmental educator. As an environmental educator, I facilitate experiences for middle-school aged children with the natural world, out of doors - the out of doors part is my favorite part. Working indoors, in the confines of a laboratory this summer made me realize how important the outdoors is to me.

Teaching in the outdoors is really a love affair with the senses. With so much to see, hear, smell, and touch, the outdoors is an ideal setting for learning about the natural world. Learning outdoors is an experience unlike any other that a schoolroom confined by walls can provide.

Perhaps the most exciting sense for the students (and me) to exercise in the out of doors classroom is touch. Positive experiences with touch at a young age can evoke fond memories later in life, memories that may later draw us back to the source of that pleasurable childhood experience, in this case, nature.

Earlier this week, as I led a group of sixth graders back through the woods after a rigorous and invigorating afternoon on the always popular Challenge Course, a small milky colored frog about the size of a quarter jumped across the trail in front of me. Quickly I snatched it up and held it tightly in my hand – one quick look at the brown X on its back told me that it was a Spring Peeper, a common species of frog in Stokes State Forest. I turned around and told the students that I had a frog in my hands. A small boy at the end of the line with wide eyes asked me, “Can I see it?”
“Sure, you can even hold it,” I said. His eyes grew even bigger.

I placed the tiny frog into his cupped hands. His lips curled to form a single word, “Cool.”
Cautiously, gently, he ran one finger over the frog’s cool, moist back. The Peeper sat tolerated this touch, sitting calmly for a moment before jumping from his hands to his shirt and out of sight into a pile of leaves.
“I have never seen a frog up close or held one before. That was so cool,” he later confided in me.
A feeling of touch, a sense of wonder, a place in nature - for me, this is what it’s all about.