Earning Eco Badges with HPL SWMS
On a wet, chilly morning in early May, HPL SWMS leadership and members pulled on their rainboots and unpacked bags of clipboards, pipe cleaners, magnifying glasses and other supplies. The eclectic mix of materials they laid out before them had one common goal: to provide education about important ecological and conservation concepts.
From May 3-5, 2024, Girl Scout troops from all over the Delmarva peninsula gathered at the scenic Camp Todd in Denton, MD to earn their Eco Badges. On May 4, the Horn Point Laboratory chapter of SWMS had the privilege of joining the Girl Scouts to provide programming that would help them in this endeavor. HPL SWMS acted as Environmental Educators to teach the Girl Scouts about ecology, conservation, and science. Girl Scouts of all ages, from the Daisies to the Seniors were in attendance, so the chapter members put their heads together to develop different programs that would fulfill the different age groups’ badge requirements and offer engaging and interesting information.
Younger Scouts got to put their creative and observational skills to the test with activities like searching for and drawing homes in nature or drawing their favorite animal and labeling different adaptations of that animal. Activities for more active Scouts included a scavenger hunt that asked them to look for ecological interactions in nature, like predator-prey relationships or symbiosis, as well as a series of running games designed to teach different ecological concepts like camouflage and population dynamics when resources are scarce or abundant. Older Scouts looking for a challenge learned how to dissect an oyster and identify its different parts, while SWMS members explained the importance of the Eastern Oyster in Chesapeake Bay. Perhaps the most powerful activity was one called Web of Life.
This activity asked the Scouts to stand in a circle and started with one person holding the yarn. That individual named a part of a food web, most commonly named was the squirrel, perhaps because of the abundance of them in the wooded area around the pavilion. The Scout who began the web would throw it to another member in the circle, who must name a different part of the food web connected to the previous one. So in the case of the squirrel, many would pick an acorn that is eaten by the squirrel or a hawk that eats the squirrel. This challenged the group to think of all the different other organisms that one may be connected to. Once everyone in the circle was holding a part of the yarn, an intricate and sturdy web was created. Everyone was connected to each other, whether directly or indirectly. The group chuckled as a few Scouts belted out a few lyrics to The Lion King’s “Circle of Life”. Mufasa’s teachings came to life in front of them, as SWMS watched the concept of ecological connections click in to place in each of their heads.
To stimulate the effect of the removal of part of this web, a SWMS member would instruct one of the participants to drop their piece of the yarn and asked the group to describe what had happened to the web they created. The answer was of course, that when a part of the web was removed (say all the pine trees had been cut down, or all the foxes disappeared), it collapsed. It didn’t take much coaxing for even the youngest of Scouts to reach this conclusion.
HPL SWMS spent that whole day with the Girl Scouts, running, exploring, drawing, and observing. Despite the pouring rain and the chill down to the bone, spirits were high among both the Girl Scouts and the members of HPL SWMS. The enthusiasm and resilience of the Girl Scouts was infectious. While the chapter got to teach about the importance of conservation that day, it is evident that HPL SWMS got to learn something from that day as well.