The Development and Implementation of an Outreach Environmental Education Program Utilizing Birds of Prey

The project describes the process used to develop and implement an outreach environmental education program for the students in the Stevens Point Area Catholic School System utilizing resident birds of prey from Wind River Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release Center. The author is a wildlife rehabilitator working under the licenses and guidance of Wind River Wildlife Rehabilitation and Release Center, which is located in New London, WI. This project is unique because not only does it address the awareness goal of Environmental Education through a presentation of various wild animals, each presentation is followed by an individualized lesson plan based on the curriculum needs of the classroom teacher that will enable the students to address other goals of Environmental Education such as knowledge, values, citizen action skills and citizen action experience. The groups of students field-testing this program belong to the Stevens Point Area Catholic Schools and range in age from kindergarten through twelfth grade. The logistics of this program included gaining support from the school system and from the wildlife center, developing the individualized lesson plan for each presentation, conducting an inservice for the faculty of the system focusing on how to schedule a program, delivering the programs to students and putting together a collection of activities that others could use in similar programs