Homeschool Service Project with the Wildlife Services

Homeschool Service Project with the Wildlife Services

We had the unique opportunity to go on a wild goose chase.

No, really.

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We went with the Utah Wildlife Services to catch wild geese so that they could be tagged and relocated.

It was a lot of fun!

This is one of those situations where being in local homeschooling groups on Facebook comes in handy! I never would have found out about this opportunity otherwise!

Volunteering With The Wildlife Services

All this week, the Utah Wildlife Services was asking for volunteers to help them catch geese so they could be relocated.

Only one of the five mornings worked for our schedule – but we were very excited to show up on our available day.

I made some homemade energy bites for breakfast the night before. We woke up the kids dark and early (and remembered one of the reasons we love homeschooling – no early mornings!) and off we went!

Utah is cold in the mornings, even in the summertime. So, of course, we started out by making sure everybody had a hat and a jacket. (hats were for sun protection)

Now we are no strangers to wildlife preservation. We understand that in order for wildlife to thrive, it has to be properly maintained by humans. This principle goes back as far as the beginning of the world.

But we have never been so closely involved in something like this before. This was a great learning experience for us.

Even I learned a lot about why it’s so important to relocate wild animals like this. (Another great thing about homeschooling – I get to learn as much as the kids!)

Wildlife Services And Relocating Wild Geese

Have you ever gone to a park or a golf course or wherever and noticed there were a lot of wild birds? (such as geese)

What were your thoughts on this?

What kind of impact do all these wild geese have on the human population when they’re in a condensed area like this?

What about the geese? What kind of impact do humans have on them when they’re inhabiting spaces so close to us?

When the Utah Wildlife Services first started catching and relocating geese like this (back in 2007) there were more than 200 geese that were caught and tagged.

Wow!

Compare that to today’s maybe 75 and you’ll see how much of an impact this project has already made in the area.

What Did We Do?

Like I mentioned before, we had to show up at the park in the early morning. This way we could get all the geese while they were still at their nests.

The kids’ job was to lure the geese away from the water with bread.

Now normally you’re not supposed to feed wild birds (or any birds, really) bread due to the lack of nutritional content (the birds fill up on bread and don’t eat anything else – similar to a kid with too much candy) but this was the easiest way to lure the birds in.

Once the geese were away from the water, the adults formed a barrier between the birds and the pond. This way if the geese tried to run, they would not be able to get in the water (much harder to catch a goose when it’s in the water!)

The kids and adults formed a great big circle around the geese so they had nowhere to go. Then some more people brought in some portable chain link fence pieces. We slowly closed in the circle and trapped the geese in the fence.

Then one by one, the geese were handed out to waiting hands and brought to the men doing the tagging (the Wildlife Services people) Each goose was tagged and documented and then put in a cage to be transported.

The kids had a lot of fun! They all got to carry a goose (some kids carried over multiple geese) and Nicole even got to catch an escapee that somebody else dropped. Our years of raising ducks really came in handy for this experience!

A Fun and Educational Experience

At the end of the gathering, the kids go to ask the Wildlife Service men some questions. The men were more than happy to answer all our homeschoolers’ questions.

This was a great learning experience for all of us. We had fun working with the geese and serving our community. And we learned a lot about the work of USDA Wildlife Services. We also learned about our responsibility as humans to take care of the earth and its resources.

You should check out the video we made of our experience below!

Field Trip Curriculum

We have decided we love going on field trips so much that we are going to launch a line of Field Trip Curriculum so other families can easily go on field trips too!

Each Field Trip Curriculum will have detailed information to go along with each field trip location we go on. Think of it as a unit studies revolving around a specific field trip.

Wildlife Service Field Trip Curriculum

To launch our new Field Trip Curriculum, I have created a 40-page PDF to go along with our Wildlife Services service project.

Now I know a lot of you won’t have the opportunity to round up wild geese like we did – but it is still great for everybody to learn about the USDA Wildlife Services.

Who are they? What do they do? What does it have to do with me?

This 40-page PDF includes research, fun kid puzzles and activities, and a success principle to go along with this topic. Also included are assessment questions and a suggestion for a research paper for older students.

This Field Trip Curriculum was designed to be flexible. Pick and choose the topics and activities you want to cover based on your students’ needs.

This Wildlife Services curriculum is FREE!

Download the curriculum and let me know what you think! I take all suggestions into consideration. And if I make any updates to any purchased curriculum, I send the updates out to those who have already purchased.

Homeschool Service Project with the Wildlife Services