Saving Species One Step At a Time

Species of Special Concern. That is the status of Canada’s polar bears today. The polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba are risking extinction because the water of Hudson’s Bay is freezing later and later, thanks to the ever-increasing Global Warming. Global Warming is happening because more and more gases are being caught up in the Earth’s atmosphere, and as a result, warming our planet. The polar bears need this ice so they can go out in the wintertime to hunt seals under the ice. Seals are the bears primary source of food, and will starve without them. Because the ice isn’t coming in quick enough, the bears are venturing closer and closer to human civilization, to look for food. Now, if the climate keeps rising at this state, the polar bears will be all but a memory in as close as 2050. I have created a Glogster to summarize research gathered for a project.

                                                                                                                       amckiel
My name is Tyler, and I go to school in a Gr ⅞ class in Southern Ontario. It is outside of the town of Wingham. Our teacher, Mrs. Durnin, uses technology to teach us in awesome ways that we could not do without it. And now, we are using it to save the polar bears! But how, do you ask? Well, Mrs. D (for short) has connections with teachers all over the world. And one of them, Mr. McKiel from Winnipeg, Manitoba had a chance to go to Churchill. He went to ride on the Tundra Buggyand webcast about the polar bears. Mrs. D learned about all of this from on of his Tweets, and decided to do a project on it with us. We hadn’t known it then, but this was going to take us where we never thought we’d go!Then, while we were researching for our project, another student from our class, Isaac, found a website, called Polar Bears International. In the website, it gave an option for you to “adopt a polar bear”. There were four packages that you could raise money for, they were $30, $50, $100, and $250. The more expensive ones came with better prizes, so obviously we were going for that one! So we had 12 days to raise $250 dollars for the polar bears, which would be $8.33 a student. We Skyped Mr. McKiel to tell him, and he was very happy to know that he had motivated us to do this. We had also found out that Coca-Cola was raising 2 million dollars for the polar bears, and that they’d changed the iconic red colour to white. So Mrs. D told us we’d celebrate with some “white” coke when we achieved our goal. And that must’ve been what sold it, because at the end, us 31 kids raised $293!
                                                                                                             Martha de Jong-Lantink
After all of this, I feel that I have truly made a difference in this world. I was the one who didn’t care at all about Global Warming, after all, I like it warm! But know I see it’s destroying habitats and is pushing species closer to extinction. I feel this project has been a huge eye-opener, and that it will never leave me. Just this little bit of support we’ve shown is going to go a long way. Projects like these don’t just give you information, they give you knowledge for life.