VIDEO SERIES Before It's Too Late: The Island Ark of Madagascar

Madagascar is unique. It is home to some of the world's oldest species that exist no where else in the world. But humanity's encroachment on this island ark has pushing most of the species to the edge of extinction.

This award winning documentary looks at the work being done to save these endangered species before it's too late.

Storyteller produce and distribute documentaries and factual programming specialising in animals and nature; from endangered species and what's being done to save them to mysterious animal and monster stories.

http://www.storyteller.com.au
http://www.animalx.net
http://www.facebook.com/storytellermn
http://twitter.com/storytellermn
http://www.animalalliestv.com
http://beforeitstoolate.org/

Photo of the Week

This frog of the genus Boophis is one of over 200 new species discovered in a recent survey completed in Madagascar in 2009

The ecological wealth of Madagascar is often cited to be vast, complex and extremely beautiful. Its diversity is still only beginning to be uncovered by science and other disciplines which is evident by the discovery of over 200 new amphibian species during a new survey conducted in 2009. In the last 15 years scientists have found over 100 new frog species alone, demonstrating that a lot more species  can be found on the island than previous estimations suggested.

 

Frank Glaw, herpetology curator at Munich's Zoologische Staatssammlung, said in a statement. "Our new surveys show, there are more species than we suspected."

Summer catch up

Welcome back! I hope you have all enjoyed your summer break and are looking forward to a new term! As our blog wasn’t running during the holidays I thought it would be good to spend this entry catching up and looking in to a couple of summer highlights before we launch in to a new term! Over the summer we have been busy bees with a number of different things going on from running workshops and conference talks to working on making progress with our research.  

 

In July we were lucky enough to be invited to help coordinate a couple of workshops with Crispin School as a part of their enrichment week, giving us our first opportunity to engage directly in the classroom with around 40 year 10 students over two days. Our workshops focused on examining the issue of deforestation whilst placing emphasis on the human dimension of deforestation by including activities directed at exploring the possible social, business and economic aspects of forest destruction.

 

Through a clever role play game called ‘Timber!’ developed by Graham Pike of the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, the kids were encouraged to adopt the role of a variety of different stakeholders commonly represented in complex environmental discussions. The game enabled the students to work on better understanding the difficulties of comprehending the complicated interactions at play when attempting to manage the eclectic interests of different groups wanting to use the forest, by promoting that deforestation is not only an ecological issue but is also strongly influenced by factors spanning the political, cultural and socio-economic realms.  Furthermore, the activity ignited great debate around wider topics of globalisation and sustainability. The success of the workshops was then finished off with a great evening community event hosted at the Red Brick Building in Glastonbury where we were able to share our message with an engaging international audience.

 

The response to the workshops was phenomenal and we would like to thank the students of Crispin School for their great efforts in participating in the activities. It was a lot of fun! We would particularly like to thank David Wrathall for his leadership and role in the development of the workshop, and Fran Thomson for her tireless support in putting together the community event in the evening. 

 

We are really looking forward to the next couple of months where we will be continuing to develop the research aspects of the project as well as beginning to work on planning our film!

If you’re interested in using the Timber! game in one of your classes, just follow the link below:

http://www.jusbiz.org/timber.html