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Hello friends, I was checking to see if anyone teaches a wildlife forensics course or lessons that they include in their teaching? I have purchased the NSTA book on Wildlife Forensics, has anyone used the book and willing to provide feedback? Thanks Liz

Hi Elizabeth, I am excited to see you have a copy of Using Forensics: Wildlife Crime Scenes, http://www.nsta.org/store/search.aspx?action=quicksearch&text=wildlife%20forensics , My grandfather was a game warden and I idolized him as I grew up. Needless to say, I wanted to save Bambi too. The book is filled with lots of immediately useable ideas, which is really nice, especially if you are a new teacher and need to have lessons that work without a whole lot of modification. I use this book with my middle school Design and Engineering students as part of our forensics unit. To enhance and engage students, the only modifications I made were to go to that next level of intrigue. I was able to get my veterinarian to help me out and got samples of all sorts of animal hair, antlers, horns, plastic skulls that originally came from pharmaceutical reps. All of these samples were sanitized and safe, and immediately improved student engagement. One of my favorite “O dark hundred in the morning epiphanies” came when I was perusing my science catalogues and ran across the wildlife animal tracks molds. These are soft, flexible, reusable molds that create replicas of animal footprints from plaster. Many of the Science catalogues have these, I happen to use Nasco, http://www.enasco.com/Search?q=animal+track+molds&x=0&y=0 . I love the variety of footprints, they are easy to make, and bring a whole new level of excitement to the project. Some of my peers choose to paint their footprints, I prefer to leave mine white and then I rub dirt over them giving them an authentic look. If you are working with younger students, they also have the footprint stamps that could be used in the place of the molded footprints. This is one unit that just gets bigger and better every year because I come up with new ideas. Some years I do owl pellets as a culminating project, others I’ve had the students create a pop-up book of an endangered species, sometimes I can get game wardens, veterinarians, or forensic specialists to come in and talk to my students about forensics as a career. The list really is endless. I would love to hear how you use the units and the modifications you inevitably will make to make this unit your own.

Such an interesting topic, Liz. I can't wait to hear how you set up your activities. I used the rubber animal track molds, too, Sandy. Our school had deer, rabbit, etc., track molds. So my colleague and I would set up a scene outside our classroom window on a snow covered lawn. Then we would have our students read "A January Thaw" by Aldo Leopold. If you haven't read the Sand County Almanac (by Leopold), you are in for a real treat. His short stories about nature and the environment are awesome. I was excited to learn that the Audubon Society has a facility in New Orleans where they have the DNA for exotic and disappearing species stored to preserve them for future generations: Audubon Center for the Research of Endangered Species (ACRES)

I will keep everyone updated on my new adventure. I have to have the syllabus for this class done by Thanksgiving. I will start contacting to get some local offices to assist me in the development. Thanks Liz

Forensics with Vernier has some interesting inquiry in it and one of them is entitled "Tracks of a Killer." --think predator/prey http://www.vernier.com/experiments/fwv/1/tracks_of_a_killer/ will give you a free pdf download of the inquiry to examine and think about using. You may also look at all 14 labs in the book - and some of the others also have an environmental oveertone http://www.vernier.com/products/books/fwv/ Students really dig 'CSI' science and it allows them to connect classroom topics with their life in their 'real' world. Happy sleuthing, MS Dalzell. Keep us posted about what you are doing and how the students react to the inquiry with the NSTA book. ~patty