CSA needs to create a safe environment for the animals that were here first
Around our campus, we can see a lot of animals regularly. Some of the most common ones are guardabarrancos, chickens, squirrels, and sometimes even cows. Before the school was built, the guardabarrancos, chickens, and squirrels lived here unmolested and free to roam where they chose. But for the last 20 years, they have seen their habitat drastically reduced as the school has grown. How has this affected them?
These holes are the nests of the guardabarrancos. Image taken from pájaro guardabarranco
Of course, the animals have in some way adapted to the change of environment. We can see the chickens walking around the hallways, the nests of guardabarrancos at the entrance of the school, and the squirrels climbing the trees around and even inside the school. No doubt they have grown used to our noisy school life and may have learned to eat the crumbs we leave behind. You can sometimes even see nests behind the basketball hoops; I wonder if these birds don’t mind the constant thuds of the balls hitting the board?
Here we can see the animals that live near CSA. Image taken from hablemosdeaves.com, industriaavicola and nationalgiographicla.com
Still, the school should do more to protect the environment of the animals that have refused to leave and still live on the campus. In the end, CSA is a guest and these animals are our hosts. They were here before us. But what kinds of things could we do?
One of the solutions can be to rebuild places where the guardabarrancos can nest since many of them must have been leveled during construction. We could also put up water baths for birds since we take care not to have areas where puddles might form and they are missing out on that important part of their behavior. We can plant more trees, finding out which are the ones that squirrels like the best, to make up for the lack of resources they might be facing.
Do you have any other ideas? Why not leave a comment below? Perhaps the 9th-grade Biology students can take up the mission to make our campus an animal-friendly one, to the best of our ability.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Comentários