Transcript Prairie Dogs Students: Valeria Davila, Shamsa Dhagane, Melanie

The Noble Wolves
Working to celebrate and conserve a Colorado native species: Prairie Dogs
Students: Valeria Davila, Shamsa Dhagane, Melanie Juarez, Nather Mohamed, Abdi
Hassan, Hannah Jobe, Joseph Teklu, Martin reyes Garcia-Reyes
Teacher: Miss Leigh
Lotus School for Excellence
Aurora, CO
Principal: Mr. Eray Idil
< Melanie
Juarez
Nather Mohamed ^
Joseph Teklu ^
Shamsa
Dhagane V
Hannah Jobe ^
Martin Reyes ^
Valeria Davila ^
Abdi Hassan >
We are middle school students
passionate about Colorado native
species, especially Prairie Dogs!!!!!!!
Environmental Issue
The challenge we selected is Land and Water. The project we chose to
focus on is endangered species and loss of biodiversity.
Our primary ecosystem in Aurora is the grasslands. In the grasslands, the
prairie dog is a keystone species that means many species rely on their
activities for food or shelter. For example the burrowing owl, the ferruginous
hawk, swift fox, western meadowlark, and the endangered black footed ferret.
The black footed ferret has been extirpated in Aurora, Colorado due to prairie
dog loss. This motivates us to strive to conserve prairie dogs in our area.
Environmental Issue
Our topic is prairie dog conservation. We would like to conserve our local
prairie dogs and ensure their existence in the future.
We would like to conserve our local Prairie Dogs because they only exist in 4%
of their original North American range. They have been going extinct due to
people poisoning, shooting, and trapping them. Urban development is one of
the main problems, and it can kill entire colonies all at once. The prairie dogs
have no where to go, as humans spread their domain.
There is a prairie dog colony near our school and our public library that we
would like to help. The prairie dogs live on “for sale” land, and we are trying to
relocate them to safer land that won’t be developed so they can remain.
Action Plan: Prairie Dog Day
We want to help Prairie Dogs in our community, so we researched what other
communities had done in their areas. We also contacted the Prairie Dog
Coalition to see if we could help with what they were already doing. They
recommended we work to proclaim Prairie Dog Day as a day to celebrate and
educate our city about prairie dogs
Therefore, we made our action plan to work with City Council Members and
proclaim Prairie Dog Day a day of celebration and education in Aurora.
City Council Meeting
After submitting the proclamation to the City Council. We took our
proclamation to city hall. Our speaker, Joseph presented the proclamation to
the Aurora City Council. The council included Aurora’s mayor! This all
happened on Monday, November 24, 2014. The next slide shows our
proclamation that we sent to city hall. Here is the footage.
Prairie Dog Day Proclamation
Whereas, February 2nd is Groundhog Day in the United States, but there are no
native groundhogs in Colorado so the holiday is not suitable for Colorado. Prairie dogs are a
similar and charismatic native species in Colorado, thus are worthy of celebration;
Whereas, Prairie dogs are the keystone species in the grasslands which are an integral
part of Colorado ecosystems. Many beautiful animals rely on their existence: the western
burrowing owl, the ferruginous hawk, swift fox, western meadowlark, and because the loss of
prairie dog colonies throughout the state the Black Footed Ferret has gone temporarily
extinct in Colorado. Ecological conservationist are making efforts to reintroduce Black
Footed Ferrets, thus a robust prairie dog population is paramount;
Where as, Prairie dog populations are decreasing for many reasons: recreational killing,
urban development, and general habitat loss, we have the opportunity to ensure their
existence in the future here in Aurora through education and conservation;
Whereas, Prairie Dog Day in the City of Aurora is a means to educate and celebrate the
beautiful Colorado native species: prairie dogs.
Implementation
To proclaim February 2nd Prairie Dog Day as a holiday in Aurora.
We are did the the following:
1. Educated ourselves about local Prairie Dog populations and how to make
a proclamation in Aurora.
2. Drafted a proclamation and submited it to the City of Aurora.
3. We are collaborating with city representatives to make the day official in
Aurora.
4. On February 2nd, we will host an event at our school to educate and
celebrate Prairie Dogs (spread to all of Aurora Public Schools when they
grant the proclamation).
5. We developed a blog that you can use to follow our progress;
https://www.tumblr.com/blog/noble-wolves
This blog has more of what we have done, more pictures, and you can continue
to follow our activities!
Implementation
We collected signatures of people who support Prairie Dog Day during a
petition. We also brought 5 letters of support from Colorado conservation
organizations.
To get word out for our project, we first used our schools STEAM Festival
(Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math). We set up two tables there,
one having our petition, and the other having quicksand goo, as a fun
advertisement. After the event we continued to collect support by each group
member taking the petition home, where we collected additional signatures.
Collaborators
These wonderful people and organizations are essential to this project’s
continued success: Southern Plains Land Trust, Wild Earth Guardians,
Animal Help Now of Boulder, Defenders of Wildlife, Prairie Dog Coalition,
and activist Terry Tempest William. Judith Miller educated us on prairie
dogs and she told us to never give up! She helped us focus on our goals
on prairie dog conservation. She also helped us collect our letters of
support.
All of these organizations provided
letters of support, we thank them dearly.
(Judith Miller educating and inspiring us about
Prairie Dog conservation in Colorado.)
Evaluate our plan, What are the results?
We want Prairie Dog Day to become a holiday in Aurora, Colorado on
February 2. We first tried sending a proclamation to Aurora City Council but
they denied our request. So we came back and tried again. We presented a
speech to the City Council of Aurora advocating for the value of Prairie Dog
Day.
At current we have meeting scheduled with our Aurora City Council
representative to demonstrate community support of Prairie Dog Day and to
advocate in a more personal way.
We see that this project is not quite finished but we think we have
accomplished a lot so far and that we continue to gather support for Prairie Dog
Day in Aurora.
What will we do with the winnings?
1. We will continue to work with Southern Land Trust and purchase land to
insure prairie dogs continue to exist in Colorado and to potentially
reintroduce Black-footed ferret in a location not far from our school!
2. We will also use funds to plan and execute a School District wide Prairie
Dog Day celebration.
Our motivation
The Lexus Eco Challenge inspired us! We found that we wanted to acknowledge a
local, yet diminishing species: prairie dogs. We want to raise awareness for them
because we think that they deserve more respect. When we studied them, we found that
there is only 4% of their original population! We also found the prairie dogs to be
adorable! Our group wants to be able to raise awareness for them as well. One way of
doing that is celebrating them: Prairie Dog Day. The day is perfect for celebrating,
raising awareness, and it's also useful for educating people about not only prairie dogs
but the positive impacts to the grassland ecosystem. Schools could teach the students
about them on Prairie Dog Day.
Despite out temporary set backs, we remain passionate about conserving
Colorado’s native wildlife, especially, prairie dogs!
Photos of the Noble Wolves in action!!