Hope Elephants
The last few weeks at Rivers Alternative Middle School (RAMS) have been exciting. We have been getting involved with the non-profit organization Hope Elephants to help make Rosie, the famous Hope Elephant, feel right at home. In the process we are learning new things about our local environment, about elephants, ecology and we are taking on a mammoth of responsibility. The goal of this project is to build an elephant rehabilitation facility to help get Rosie back on her feet. Their first project is to rehabilitate the 42 year old Asian elephant, the one and only ROSIE! According to the Hope Elephants website, "Hope Elephants will provide a custom rehabilitation regime to increase her mobility and comfort. She will receive daily therapeutic ultrasound treatment, hydrotherapy, and low-impact exercise on the world's first elephant water treadmill. Rosie will also receive medication and nutritional support aimed at improving her situation." Every Wednesday, while the construction team builds the heated barn, underwater treadmill and reinforced fence system, RAMS students are making sure the back yard, which will soon be her paddock, is safe for old Rosie.
This is an extensive project which includes studying, photographing and identifying all the plants and trees that we find so that we can be sure that it is safe for Rosie. Using iPod touches and their installed cameras, we take pictures of the unidentified plants and or animals, and upload them to a new website called Project Noah, which then lets people around the world help us identify what they are. Project Noah is a website for nature lovers and nature experts, where they can document and post local wildlife to share around the globe, letting us reconnect with our home planet. I highly recommend you check it out at: www.projectnoah.org
by maddy tallberg
What RAMS has been doing for Hope Elephants is we have been checking out the plants in Rosie’s habitat to see if anything is harmful to her. We believe this is very good for Rosie. RAMS was there while construction was going on and it was amazing. The person that we meet with there is David Muson. Dave has taught us so many things about about plants and animals. RAMS is also on a website called Project Noah. It’s a website where you can post pictures of unknown or known species you have found around your local environment. We take pictures at Rosie’s habitat and then upload them to Project Noah to be identified.
by Hannah Thibault
Monday, October 31, 2011
