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Creating a Habitat-Defending Endangered Species and Habita At-a-Glance
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| Brief Summary:
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There are many ways that your synagogue, school, JCC and or Hillel can help defend and protect endangered species and habitat.
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| Audience:
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Early Childhood
Ages 5-7
Ages 8-10
Ages 11-13
Ages 14-17 (High School)
Family/Community
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Community Center
Outdoors (Camp)
Outdoors (Park/Wilderness)
Outdoors (Urban/Suburban)
Religious/Day School
Synagogue
Other
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Bible/Text
Educational Program
Game/Hike/Outdoor Activity
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| Issues:
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Air/Water/Trees
Baal Tashchit/Waste/Recycling
Eco-Kashrut/Vegetarianism
Energy/Global Warming
Environmental Health and Justice
Shmittah/Land Use/Agriculture
Tikkun Olam/Stewardship/Values and Ethics
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Description
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Creating a habitat on the grounds of your synagogues or school enriches learning opportunities for everyone, and demonstrates how even small actions can help provide habitat for many species. Through the National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program, you can learn to develop the optimal habitat on your grounds.
This easy to follow program involves: a) assessing which animals enter your grounds and noticing their sources of food, cover, water, and the places they raise their young; b) developing habitat on one area of your grounds. Working with the staff at the National Wildlife Federation, each project is encouraged to meet certain criteria for an effective and diverse habitat. Presently, over 18,600 homes and 192 schools have been certified.
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Materials Needed
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Varies, based on ecoregion and microhabitat; contact the National Wildlife Federation. Judaic tie-ins can be found in our rich thought and literature on biodiversity, and endangered species; an obvious time to kick off or celebrate such a project would be during Parshat Noach, which usually is read almost exactly one month after Rosh Hashanah. See ?Jewish Sources on Biodiversity? in the Learn section of the COEJL website for more background.
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Benchmarks
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Well-versed educators will easily be able to tie in many of the Judaic concepts identified in the biodiversity materials. Educators should ask themselves: How does this concept (i.e. bal tashchit, environmental health, tikkun olam, etc) relate back to this program? Your answer becomes part of your teaching toolkit.
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Resources
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National Wildlife Federation's Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program: see http://www.nwf.org/backyardwildlifehabitat/. Much of what you?ll need -- guide to plantings indigenous to your area, on-line backyard planner, FAQs, applications for certification, and much more -- is free and readily available. Links will also take you to some helpful published materials which you can order from the same website. Of the categories listed there, congregation-yards would be most closely linked to schoolyards in terms of approaches to take, benchmarks of success, etc.
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Preparation Time
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Please leave enough time to gather the appropriate information from the National Wildlife Federation, link in Jewish perspectives and texts, and gather support from within the congregation or organization for making the grounds into a habitat for native species. Implementation of the program may then commence immediately, but will take months and years to complete, and to see the benefits.
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Activity Time
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This is an ongoing project, offering some immediate gratification but not reaping its full rewards for months and even years. Please pay attention to the weekly parsha, as many concepts within the Torah can be related back to plants, animals, and stewardship.
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Attached Files
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Comments
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