A Trip into the Field
An elk perks his ears as the field trip tries out calls at Zoo in Pocatello.
Last week, the 4-H Extension office teamed up with Region 5 Fish and Game to provide a fun and informative field trip for the kids of Caribou County. Starting at the annex building in Soda Springs, the bus moved its way to the Y where it picked up kids from Grace, Bancroft, and surrounding areas before heading up the freeway to Pocatello. While in town, the group spent an active morning at the Edson Fichter nature area and Zoo Idaho.
The group was led by Extension Educator Justin Hatch and Region 5 Fish and Game Communications Director Jennifer Jackson, along with Alexis Carroll and Sarah Smith from the Extension Office, and Tina Chacon from Fish and Game. The goal was to provide an educational trip field day for Caribou County’s 4-H kids, and give them a chance to get out and experience some of what the outdoors has to offer.
During the early afternoon, the group spent time at the Nature area at Edson Fichter Park, near Indian Hills Elementary on the outskirts of town. The area is commonly used for outdoor education purposes, due to its diversity of wildlife, vegetation, landscape features, and proximity to the Portneuf river. “This is such a wonderful place to have right here in Pocatello,” Jackson said. “We do a lot of activities here.” Students spent time walking through the area and locating examples of plant and wildlife items on their Bingo sheets, taking in the sun, and taking about different aspects of wildlife and plant ecology.
The nature area hosts signs describing wildlife that can be seen in the area—such as Monarch butterflies and Riparian animals—as well as some of the natural forces that create and influence the landscape.
After a sack lunch on the grass, the kids played a game in which they took on the various roles of predator and prey animals as a way of looking at how the numbers of each affect the system as a whole. The “prey” animals had to run across an area and grab three tokens representing food without being snared by any predators. For their part, the predators had to wait a full twenty seconds after leading one prey “animal” out of the play area before they could chase another. At first, more predators were added to the mix, demonstrating that there was a considerable effect on prey animals who became much easier to grab. Eventually, “hunters” were added to the mix, which rebalanced the relationship between the predators and prey.
The game was a big hit, and despite the schedule and call of the zoo, it was reluctantly that the group packed the bus and headed to see the real predator and prey animals.
The reluctance was only brief, however, as the zoo itself also turned out to be a big hit. Zoo Educator Sarah Willett, joins the zoo during the summer to help provide educational courses to the area’s kids. Her background as a kindergarten teacher was clear, and she patiently engaged with the children and fielded a seemingly endless series of questions.
There was a lot to ask about, as the zoo features a lot of interesting wildlife, all of which is local to the area. In fact, Zoo Idaho is one of the small number of zoos across the country that uses a local biome approach to its animal displays. While most city zoos tend to compete to keep up with the elephants, lions, polar bears, and other exotic animals that represent Zoo Life to many people, such a pursuit can be enormously expensive and require the animals to live outside the conditions they would normally occupy. The local approach allows the Zoo to maintain the animals is what is essentially their native habitat type, and it also lets the facility serve as a rescue and rehabilitation location for local animals in need of aid.
Willett explained how some of the animals in the Zoo had made their way there through injury or misadventure, but several of them—like the Zoo’s Grizzly Shoni—had become too familiar with humans to survive in the wild without becoming problematic or placing themselves in danger.
Other animals had “imprinted” on people too young, and were also not considered releasable.
Based on how excitedly the kids responded to the kinds of learning provided by the Fish and Game office, the Zoo, and the Extension office, it’s clear that the programs know how to reach their audience. It’s also clear that what they have to teach is something that is valuable for kids of all ages.
