declining population of caribous and reindeer- they are the same creatures but diff names

read on ....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090612/sc_livescience/reindeercariboupopulationsplunge

Hills of Moraga

Hills of Moraga - this is a way better version sang by all of our Moraga School District elementary children in our local park thanking the community for their generous donation to our foundation that supports the arts. I am proud to both be a teacher and a parent of this district!

The "off-key" version voice is mine...I was really not meant to be a singer!

So....what was this trip all about?

Reflection on my journey to Nova Scotia....Have you ever thought what would happen if we lost these .....a white tail deer,

the Atlantic seacoast that host a ton of living organism in this habitat

Frogs eggs....

Big words come to my mind as I reflect back to everything we have done here...

Scruffing the vole

A pile of snowshoe hare poop

(thats a pile of 100)

This long journey hopefully will answer these questions:

So, why catch, trap and release voles, chipmunks and mice, and then also count snowshoe hare poop, and deer poop? Why look for the field damage signs? Why did we have to repeat these investigations in two different sites? Tick drag (alot of us have never even heard of it)?
We did agree that its for SCIENCE - but bottom line, my one major goal is to connect this to the big word - CONSERVATION. Conservation is a big word that we have to discuss and think about.

In your own words, not the dictionary, what do you think conservation is, taking into account what I have done over the last two weeks.

My last blog for the night! I am packing up and getting on that plane in a few hours. BUT, I will be checking in on Sunday!

All the best - onwards we go boys and girls!

Millie Tang

The Panthers are thanking their generous donors!

The Panthers are coming Home!
My deepest gratitude goes out to both the Earthwatch Institute team and Wells Fargo Bank for such a great indescribable opportunity.


It has opened the sleeping giants within us, most especially, in me, to go out and teach more. With this burning urgency to go back into the classroom, I am hoping that I will leave an impact or legacy with the future conservationists of the world wherever I go or whomever I come across in this planet.

Wells Fargo Bank and Earthwatch Institute video

Wells Fargo and Earthwatch Institute - what a great experience - Thank you once again!

Countdown to go home

"Are we there yet?" I wonder how long this will take for me to make it home from Nova Scotia to Moraga, CA?

My best rendition of The Hills of Moraga while waiting to work on the traps!

Onwards we go...see you in a few days!
MTang

Found a local to talk to us...

Lobster traps

Look how tall and wide these traps are as compared to the height of our Panther ( he was a stowaway in my luggage)
Not your regular bouys but these are individual ID buoys for each lobster trap.

Local lobster man, Tanner, shared a few crustracean secrets with us.

1. One of the largest industry for Nova Scotia is lobster trapping from November to around May each year.

2. After lobster season, they fish for the different fishes to sell to the local market.

3. Lobster likes warmer water, and will come closer to the shore line and spawn their eggs.

4. He drops his 250 traps in the morning and leaves it overnight before he comes back in the morning to pull in his catch. He does come back in the afternoon to check the traps. More often than not, he will find at least one catch per trap when he pulls it in.

5. Tanner has a GPS system in his boat that plots all the traps he "throws" into the water. Imagine if you can not find those! He also baits his trap with chopped up mackerel or some kind of fish.

6. Interesting fact- these lobster catchers do not like SEALS. They actually can shoot these seals and will not get in trouble for doing that. They have no use for these dead seals either. Just this year alone 800 seals have been killed and thats even lower than how much they were expecting to kill!

Though we are studying the climate change for the small land mammals, climate change has also affected the aquatic life. We will investigate that tomorrow when we visit an adjunct coast - interesting - I didnt know what ADJUNCT meant also and had to ask Dr. Chris Newman about it.

Your task is to think why these fisherman and lobster catchers do not like seals AT ALL. Give me at least 3 good responses to it!

I will be waiting!

ps...did you know that when you click on most of my pictures it will give you a larger image of it!

The Panther Turning tourist for a few hours here in NS

Panther visiting the coastline of the
ATLANTIC OCEAN

The team had a few hours to catch up on work today, Thursday and I decided to prowl through the little town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. This is where our "base camp" is located. This is a very small, quiet town, the coast stretches along the road as we drive up and down everyday. But this PANTHER defintely spotted quite a few differences between our town of Moraga and the California coastline as compared to the Atlantic Coastline. Trust me, I also have fallen in love with this coastline out here but the windfactor was going 50 miles an hour and I could not get my hand to take a steady picture nor keep myself from blowing over!

What I want you do to is connect your schema about these pictures and think if you spot the differences between our town and that of Lunenburg and see if there are differences.

I will be waiting!

Onward we go boys and girls....

Mrs. Tang