The Amphibian Education Program
The Amphibian Education Program is one of the most important aspects of our project, ensuring the effective conservation and protection of amphibians. Through education we can disseminate effective conservation programs that target people living on the specific habitats where threatened species are found. With this, tool we aim to encourage interest in the community about the importance of these species and show that they are in integral part of the environment and our daily lives. Our educational work primarily seeks to reach children, youth and adults who live in the areas where our target amphibians live and where we are monitoring amphibian populations within Massif the La Selle and Massif the La Hotte.
Methodology
The education program is designed to teach the community about the importance of amphibians in nature and to show them the environmental value that these organism and their ecosystem. We will conduct a 2-hour educational workshop that provides summarized key information for no more than thirty school children at a time.
Workshop Content
Methodology
The education program is designed to teach the community about the importance of amphibians in nature and to show them the environmental value that these organism and their ecosystem. We will conduct a 2-hour educational workshop that provides summarized key information for no more than thirty school children at a time.
Workshop Content
- Amazing Animals: details the basic characteristics of amphibians. The public can learn about the classification within the groups of vertebrates. The meaning of the word amphibian and its origin, which helps us show the kids about why they are indicator species, since they occupy both aquatic and terrestrial environments.
- Skin and Skeleton: a brief review of the anatomy (body, muscles, skin, skeleton, and the nervous, respiratory, digestive, circulatory, and reproductive systems).
- Home of the Amphibians: discusses the different habitats and locations where these species live and how they have adapted to life up in the Caribbean and the high mountains of Haiti. This topic also helps us tie in the frogs with the need to protect the environment.
- What do they eat?: Here we go over the different types of foods we feed our species on our ex situ conservation program and use it to teach students about the importance frogs (and swifts and bats) as natural pest control agents.
- Metamorphosis: all about the development process of the frogs, explains their different states and changes that tadpoles go through. Here we try to link those changes with the changes in puberty and how the older kids in the audience have grown out of the tadpole stage and are ‘froglets’ and ‘toadlets’, while the smaller kids are still wiggly tadpoles.
- Threats: leading causes for the reduced populations of local frogs. It analyzes in detail the threats and possible solutions, which we try to discussed with the attendees.
- What is being done to save them?: Brief detail of the work done by the researchers to save amphibian populations worldwide and the work we do in Haiti.
- Advantages amphibians give us: we speak of the importance of amphibians and live with all the benefits that human beings have to be amphibian on our planet.
- Myths and truths: we talk with kids and adults about the myths you hear around these species, such as: “They are poisonous and can kill you!”, “They give you warts!”. At the end this little session makes people see that amphibians are beautiful species and that they actually help us and entertain* us with their calls and antics.
*The wordEntertainment is used as a tool to grab their attention and to transition into our games. We do make an active effort to discourage participants from playing with, handling or collecting wild amphibians.
