The Wonders of Weasels
presented by Tom Dale
The weasel family is a diverse group of vicious predators. They have long been sought by humans for their luxurious fur coats, while also being reviled for their rank smell, and blood thirsty and thieving ways. From the tiny least weasel to the ferocious wolverine, early European explorers scoured North America in search of their valuable pelts, driving many to the very edge of extinction. Today, healthy populations of many species can be found in Michigan, thanks to the implementation of population management through regulated trapping, habitat restoration and re-introductions of formerly extirpated species. With many thanks to a generous grant from the J.P. Morgan Chase Bank Foundation and support from the Kirtland’s Warbler Festival, Kirtland Community College and Marguerite Gahagan Nature Preserve, naturalist/educator Tom Dale has developed and presented this program to several thousand school children in the KCC service area. There will be a puppet show, a show and tell program and dozens of hands-on weasel family natural history items to discover.
A science instructor at Kirtland Community College from 1973-2000, Dale continues to teach on a part-time basis. He also was a high school and junior high science teacher (1968-73) in Ithaca, and is currently the education director at Gahagan Nature Preserve (2000 to present) in Roscommon. His ongoing educational activities include outdoor science education field trips for area elementary and middle school classes, and visiting naturalist programs to area schools, including Wolf Songs, Bear Tracks, Cat Tales, and the Wonder of Weasels and the ELF program. ELF, or Environmental Learning for the Future, provides National Science Education Benchmark referenced lessons to K-5 classes. Groups of adult volunteers meet monthly in surrounding communities to learn about the new topic and practice teaching the lessons. The adults in turn, present the lessons in the classrooms.
© 2008 Kirtland's Warbler Festival