Hatching Awareness
Lewis Center expands programs on desert tortoise ecologyBy Nikki Cobb/Staff Writer
APPLE VALLEY – Despite all the fuss and controversy surrounding the endangered desert tortoise, most High Desert residents have never seen one of the creatures, and know little about their needs and habits.
But new programs at the Lewis Center for Educational Research are intended to change that. The school, already home to two rescued tortoises, is expanding and improving its facilities for housing and studying many more of them.
Matthew Huffine, Lewis Center science department coordinator, said the research done by students will be useful in conservation efforts.
Richard Dees, an employess with the Home Depot, and Margaret Domincick, the treasurer for the California Turtle and Tortoise Club of the High Desert, volunteer their time Thursday to help build seperate paddocks for each individual tortoise at the Lewis Center for Educational Research tortoise habitat in Apple Valley. |
Moreover, he said, by learning about the lives of tortoises and what the biggest threats to them are, students will grow up with respect for their needs and environment.
"This is the beginning of a large educational project targeted at third- and fourth-graders," Huffine said. "And if you can capture the heart of a fourth-grade kid, the parents will usually follow."
Huffine said those benefits will reach far beyond the students at the Apple Valley institution's campus. He said about 5,000 students from other schools visit the Lewis Center each year to take advantage of its programs.
That's an exciting opportunity to raise awareness, said Judy Rogers of the California Turtle and Tortoise Club, which, with The Home Depot, is helping with the construction of the new habitat.
"The more each kid knows, the more they can teach other kids," Rogers said. "That's what's going to be great."
Huffine said video cameras will broadcast the tortoise's life cycle through the Internet, letting kids watch egg laying and hatching.
Students will carefully monitor environmental conditions, such as the temperature inside and outside tortoise burrows. Then they'll look for correlations between changing conditions and tortoise behavior.
"We'll have hatchlings being raised in the classrooms, and we're developing a curriculum to go along with that," Huffine said. "Kids will learn about tortoise ecology and care, and what they can do to help recover them."
Used with permission by Daily Press, Freedom Communication, 2003