Bear Fur, Feathers, and Ferns Adventure

Adventure Goal: Trek through the wild spaces of your community, finding what lives there, and learn to appreciate the need for natural areas.

Adventure Requirements:
Complete Requirement 1 and three others.

While hiking or walking for one mile, identify six signs that any mammals, birds, insects, reptiles, or plants are living near the place where you choose to hike or walk.
Visit one of the following: zoo, wildlife refuge, nature center, aviary, game preserve, local conservation area, wildlife rescue group, or fish hatchery. Describe what you learned during your visit.
Name one animal that has become extinct in the last 100 years and one animal that is currently endangered. Explain what caused their declines.
Observe wildlife from a distance. Describe what you saw.
Use a magnifying glass to examine plants more closely. Describe what you saw through the magnifying glass that you could not see without it.
Learn about composting and how vegetable waste can be turned into fertilizer for plants.
Plant a vegetable or herb garden.

Ideas for Adventure Requirements:

Requirements 1 through 5 could all be done on one den outing if scouts researched extinct animals beforehand. Signs could be sound, tracks, scat, fur, feathers, or visual sighting.
Visit IUCN.org and check out the Red List of threatened species (the Photos page would be most interesting).
At a den meeting, offer as many of these different places as possible in your area and let the scouts choose which sounds most interesting.
Binoculars and a camera with telephoto lens helps us keep our distance. Staying on the trail and being observant for unusual animal behavior is a good idea.
Take time to view a fresh, green leaf and a leaf that has begun to decompose. What differences are there? color, disintegrating material, crunchy or soggy.
Visit EPA.gov Composting for information about composting.
Have a selection of vegetable seeds on a white sheet of paper and have scouts try to identify them. Help them figure out how long various vegetables will take to grow and how much space they will need. Then, let them choose a few to plant in egg cartons, paper cups, or other personal, portable growing containers.

Den Meeting Ideas for Fur, Feathers, and Ferns Adventure:

Play Group Morph.
Create Wacky Animals.
Play Vegetable Olympics.
Perform Cubmaster In the Wild skit.
Sing LIttle Green Frog song.
Sing Tom the Toad song.
The LNT Principles for Kids are listed in the back of the Bear Handbook. Read details of the principles and implementing them at LNT.org and Outdoor Ethics.
Learn more about Leave No Trace from Leave No Trace Dude.
Learn more about Hiking from Hiking Dude.

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