Exploring Our Earth

Issue 800 Thursday, April 19, 2012

Supported by readers of the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News

Prickly Paths, PageS 4 and 5.Rain Forest Heroes, Page 2.

Life Lessons, Page 3.

Girl Scouts Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen have won another impressive honor for their dedication and hard work

to help the Earth.You first read about the high school juniors from

Ann Arbor’s Greenhills School last year. Rhiannon and Madison, who goes by Madi, have become passionate advocates for orangutans and their shrinking forest habitat in Malaysia and Indonesia due to a huge demand for palm oil, which is found in many products, including Girl Scout cookies. For several years, the girls have been working to convince Girl Scouts USA to change their cookie recipes, replacing palm oil with an environmentally friendly alternative ingredient. The two friends and Girl Scouts became interested in the issue when they were in sixth grade. They began researching the topic to earn their Girl Scout Bronze Award. (They later earned their Silver Award and are working on the Gold Award this summer.)

In February, they traveled to New York City to receive the Forest Heroes Award from the United Nations. This first-ever award was to recognize “everyday people” who are dedicating their lives to protecting forests around the world. Madi and Rhiannon competed against entries from from 41 countries.

“It was a huge honor,” said Madi, adding, “We were the only young people, and the only young women (winners), so it was kind of cool…” The girls said it was “incredibly inspiring and humbling” to hear the stories and accomplishments of the other award winners.

In March, the girls met with Dr. Jane Goodall when she came to speak at Central Michigan University. The famous primatologist is a source of inspiration for their work.

In fact, the girls are working as “Chimpanzee Ambassadors,” spreading the word about the new Disney nature movie “Chimpanzee.’’ Next week, Disney will be making a donation to the Jane Goodall Institute for each ticket sold during the film’s opening week. The girls are also traveling to the Philadelphia Zoo this month to be judges of a student contest in celebration of “The Lorax” movie.

What’s next for this dynamic duo? Last November the girls traveled to Colombia with the group Witness For Peace to learn about human rights issues related to the harvesting of palm oil. The girls hope to continue to travel, maybe even this summer. “Our big goal is to get to Indonesia,” says Rhiannon.

By Janis Campbell

Keep up with the girls at PROJECT ORANGS, which stands for Orangutans Really Appreciate and Need Girl Scouts, at www.projectorangs.org.

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Yak’s Corner is all about the Earth this week with Earth Day on Sunday.

On Page 2, two Ann Arbor Girl Scouts are honored by the United Nations for their campaign fighting palm oil in cookies.

On Page 3, the Yak visits the Cranbrook Institute of Science for an awesome exhibit on our Earth.

On Pages 4 and 5, the Yak learns about the diversity in the desert and efforts to save this fragile environment.

There are many area Earth Day events this weekend, including at the Detroit Zoo as well as area Metroparks. Check out www.detroitzoo.org and www.metroparks.com. Happy Earth Weekend!

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Printed by: The Detroit Media Partnership Sterling Heights, Michigan, Spring 2012.

• Yakking about the news, Page 6.• Your art, Page 7.

On the cover:

Also Inside:

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Yak Chat

A class stops to examine seedlings at the Desert Botanical Garden, a frequent field trip for Arizona schools.Photo Courtesy of Desert Botanical Garden

Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva went to New York City to accept their United Nations Forest Heroes award.

Photo Courtesy of Tomtishen/Vorva familiesHigh school juniors Madison Vorva, left, and Rhiannon Tomtishen proudly display their medals. The two Girl Scouts were honored to win the Forest Heroes Award from the United Nations for their work to protect orangutans and their forest habitat. The girls are campaigning to make Girl Scout cookies “rainforest-safe” in the future.

Kids Making News

Forest Heroes On The Move

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM Thursday, April 19, 2012 3

Have you had your Vitamin W lately? It’s a lot like Vitamin Z, the make-believe “Vitamin Zoo” we wrote about in our last Detroit Zoo story.

“Vitamin Wonder” is an energy booster, too. We made it up to describe the astonishment and curiosity we always feel at the best museum shows. We were barely past the entrance when we felt it once again at “Life on Earth!,” a new show at the Cranbrook Institute of Science, in Bloomfield Hills.

“See that giant White Rhino?” asked John Zawiskie, pointing to a massive head mounted on a wall. It was the very first thing we saw.

“That’s real. See that Bengal Tiger? That’s real. The lion coming out of the wall is real. The monkeys – they’re all the real thing.”

What an incredible display! John, who is both a paleontologist and a geologist, or a fossil and a rock scientist, scoured the institute’s vast natural history collection to put together the show. He also tapped a little-known treasure trove: Wayne State University’s natural history collection, which hasn’t been open to the public in quite a few years.

Using specimens from both institutions, John was able to assemble the show’s truly spectacular “Wall of Life.” Twenty-eight animal groups are represented, including mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish and birds.

“The idea was to focus on the concept of the diversity of life – biodiversity,” John said.

Many of the specimens were so life-like we half-expected them to roar or cheep or croak. Three were of extinct species, which made seeing them all the

more wondrous. One was the Carolina Parakeet, the only parakeet native to North America, though no longer.

The mollusk collection was a knockout. Mollusks include snails, clams and mussels, and hundreds of shiny shells were displayed. If you think a clam is a clam is a clam, think again. Each species’ shell was unique, proving once again that many of the world’s most beautiful shapes are found in Nature.

The show also explores Earth’s five mass extinctions, or periods when thousands of species disappeared. After each extinction, new species evolved, eventually including Homo sapiens (that’s us).

Still, more than 99 percent of all the species that ever lived on Earth are gone. That includes the American Mastodon, a prehistoric elephant that once roamed Michigan. Don’t believe us? There’s an enormous mastodon skull in the show. “It was found in 1934 right across the street from the museum,” said John, “at the corner of Woodward at Charing Cross Road.”

The show runs through Sept. 2. For more, visit http://science.cranbrook.edu.

By Patricia Chargot

The Earth’s first five extinctions occurred long before human beings existed. They were triggered by a variety of factors, including lava eruptions and global warming. Scientists believe a sixth mass extinction may be underway, this one caused by humans – the over-fishing,

over-hunting and over-development of the planet.

This shell is the most beautiful we’ve ever seen. The extinct mollusk lived 70 million years ago. It’s fossil remains were found in the Canadian Rockies.

From Mollusks to Mastodons, Enjoy This Out-of-This World Exhibit

Photos by Per KjeldsenHow many species can you identify in the exhibit’s Wall of Life? Can you spot the armadillo?

It’s hard to believe this Bengal Tiger isn’t alive. It’s just one of the many well preserved life forms in Cranbrook’s “Life on Earth” show.

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Come along for a walk down the Desert Botanical Garden paths with the Yak to celebrate the Earth and learn about

this amazing environment.Everywhere the eye can see in Arizona’s

Desert Botanical Garden (DBG) near Phoenix are desert plants, teeming with life that thrives in the Arizona dry heat and desert soil. The Yak put on his floppy hat, walking shoes and a camera to set out exploring all the garden’s mysteries. You could say he was being a desert detective, following clues along the trail.

Look up! The Yak’s hair almost stood on end when he saw the towering saguaro (sah-WAH-ro) cactus. The tree-like cactus stretched up above the Yak’s horns, proudly saluting the sky.

Look down! Not far from this giant plant,

the Yak spotted purple flowers bursting forth from another prickly plant. But don’t touch! The beautiful cactus plants protect themselves with the sharp spikes.

And look around! Red peaks of mountains stand like sentries guarding the garden’s wonders.

A botanical garden is really an outdoor plant museum without walls. “We call it an outdoor laboratory,” said Tina Wilson, DBG education director.

This living lab is a place where Earth Day is everyday. And the lab lessons are sure easy to learn, especially on a sunny spring day hike on the many trails. One lesson is water conservation. Visitors see how the cactus family stores water – a precious resource as the desert gets only 7 inches of rainfall. This garden is important because

Sweet Delights For Desert Detectives

The Teddy Bear Cholla looks like it has arms and legs, but don’t give it a hug!

Photos by Cathy CollisonDiverse plants in the garden all have common as well as Latin scientific names such as the saguaro (Carnegiea gigantea) and the lovely purple cactus (Stenocereus pruinosus), commonly called pitaya.

The Prickly Pear cactus is flat and is used in jams and jellies even today.

Surrounding the Desert Botanical Garden are several mountains.

Yak On The Road

it has some unique elements as part of the Sonoran Desert, explains Tina. “This makes the Sonoran one of the most diverse deserts in North America,” she says. Deserts, dry lands with heat and little rain, differ among regions. The Sonoran desert has two rainfall seasons, not just one like other desert areas. This creates a diversity in the plant life. The garden, which was begun in 1939, has more than 4,000 species and 17,000 individual plants. Among those are plants that are endangered, so the garden works to conserve and protect them, just as preserves protect endangered animals.

There’s no yellow brick road here, but many paths to choose – and yes, we went both ways, looping around to pick our way through the prickly preserve of wonders. We started down the Desert Discovery Trail and paused and posed by the prickly pear cactus – the flat leaves look almost like pancakes (and we later tried prickly pear jam on them!), but are studded with sharp spears to keep away predators.

Next, we fell in love with the Teddy Bear Cholla (pronounced CHOY-uh). We wanted to hug the little plant – which, of course, we didn’t! The cholla seems like it can jump so you don’t get too close. It doesn’t jump, but any slight disturbance means a little piece can break loose and attach itself, like a Velcro snap on the shoes, to a person or animal wandering by.

As the sign pointed out, that’s the clever way nature makes sure the cholla plant

spreads to more places.We loved the “Plants and People”

path, which winds through five habitats to illustrate how the desert plants have

been used in food, medicine and the Native American culture

for 2,000 years.Volunteer Pat McKenna

showed us how the yucca has been harvested with the heart dried and used to weave baskets, and the yucca sap provides

soap. We stopped at each

signpost and tried many activities like spraying a little water on the creosote plants – so we could sniff what they smelled like when it rains. Eeeuuu! It stinks!

With so many paths to explore, two visitors the

Yak met were taking the whole day at the garden. Friends in the Phoenix area, Brooklyn, 8, and her friend Sabrina, 8, were on school break and excited to be at the garden.

What’s the favorite thing to see? The “saguaro” they told the Yak. Since they live nearby, they’ll visit again.

Even though we’re far away in Michigan, we keep coming back when we visit the web site. You can do this, too, as the garden

has launched a virtual visit on its web site so all of us can be educated on the desert. (Check out www.dbg.org/digitallearning.) You can almost feel the plants prickly spikes as you wander through the web.

Desert, you’re a sweet treat!

By Cathy Collison

The state of Arizona is celebrating its centennial. It became a state in 1912.

YAKTIVITY: Be A Plant ScientistTina Wilson told us how you could be a

garden scientist at home:

“Take time to look and explore the outdoors to realize how special your home is,” says Tina. Take a notebook to record your thoughts and observations. A hands-on experiment can be as simple as keeping a journal. She suggests you might pick one plant in your backyard, or school grounds to observe over all the seasons. Look at how it changes, grows and write down its colors. Once you have this data, compare this with the website’s desert plants and life. What is similar? What is different?

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The sign says “Saguaro Hotel,” showing visitors what each part of the cactus provides from “plumbing” to “security.”

Photos by Cathy CollisonBrookelyn, 8, left, and her fellow second-grader Sabrina, 8, are glad they live near the garden so they can visit often.

Blooms are precious, and some cactus even bloom at night.

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March Meteorology Madness

The March records are in and Detroit was among the cities breaking temperature records with the unusually warm temperatures. Meteorologists, people who study the science of weather, at the National Weather Service, found that March in Michigan was the warmest on record with several days in the 70s and 80s. More than 6,000 records were broken in the nation, especially in the Midwest! In the Detroit area, the average monthly temperature reached 50.7 degrees. In Holland, Michigan, the tulips were blooming in late March, way ahead of the annual May festival. (The Tulip Time festival still takes place; some tulips are late-blooming varieties.) April so far has returned to more normal temperatures for the season.

Supersized SnakeThe Smithsonian magazine

describes an ancient snake so big that it could stretch out longer than a school bus. A new show and display has shared more information about Titanoboa – the name meaning titanic, or giant, and boa, as an ancestor of today’s boa constrictors. The snake probably weighed 2,500 pounds. A life-size replica is now on display in the National Museum of Natural History, in Washington, D.C. You can read about the snake at www.smithsonianmag.com.The Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Florida Museum of Natural History teams found parts of the snake’s skull in Colombia, South America. From examining the skull alone, they could tell that it could swallow a crocodile – whole!

Pink Slime OutIt sounds yucky – pink slime – and it is.

That’s the slang for beef meat filler made from scraps of beef. Some hamburger and ground beef products contain the slime. Last month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) ruled that beginning in fall, the National School Lunch program would allow schools to choose beef that does NOT contain this product. The product has raised concerns due to chemicals used in its processing. Speaking of school lunch, turn to Page 8 to read about a USDA visit to the schools here.

Green Slime InNickelodeon’s Kids Choice Awards this

spring shot out cannons full of green slime, especially on Justin Bieber who was voted as the star that fans most wanted to see

slimed. A bit of green leftover goo even got on First Lady Michelle Obama, who won the award two years ago and this year presented the “Big Help” award to country singer Taylor Swift. Taylor was honored for her work to stop bullying. Other winners included Big Time Rush and Selena Gomez.

The Buzz on BeesBumblebees and honeybees may be

suffering from the use of a common pesticide. In a recent issue of the journal Science, researchers shared reports raising fears on the uses of pesticides and their effect on bee colonies. Honeybees’ brains, according to one experiment, may be so hurt by chemicals that the bees can’t find their way to the home hive. Another study showed that bumblebees might not be able to supply enough food to the hives. Other scientists have argued and pointed to the drop in bee populations tied to viruses, and changes in habitat where land development means fewer flowers. More research will continue.

Compiled by Cathy Collison

Yakking about the newsA weekly wrap-up for young readers

Artist image courtesy of University of Florida/Jason BourqueThis artists’ image is how scientists believe a giant prehistoric snake looked 60 million years ago.

Photo by Per KjeldsenThe Yak has visited Holland for the tulip festival. This year, many of the tulips bloomed in March.

MICHIGAN K.I.D.S. | WWW.DNIE.COM 7Thursday, April 19, 2012

By Sydney Olsen, 12, Sterling Heights

By Angel Pollard, 10, Detroit

By Nicholas Faransi, 12, Sterling Heights By Koa Olatunji, 7, Detroit

By Jada Davis, 11, Detroit

By Darrell Thompson, 11, Detroit

Think About ArtThink About Art: Go Green! Go Blue! Spring is

beginning to bloom! Send us your drawings of the great outdoors – and see how many shades or

hues of green and blue you can use in the back-ground – along with an eye-popping bold color in the front, or foreground – whether a flower, a

person with a bright shirt or a kite in the sky!

Send usyour art

Draw on only white 8 -by-11 paper and use bright colors. Be sure to print your name, age, city and phone number clearly on the back of your drawing. Send your art to Yak’s Corner Art, c/o DNIE, 615 W. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit, MI 48226

See more art online in the Yak Art Gallery at www.yakscorner.com

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Why is it important to eat healthy?

Who is Audrey Rowe?

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Yak’stake-home page

Build skills for reading – tips to try

Healthy Eating Leads to Healthy Minds

Detroit Public Schools knows the importance of providing nutritious, balanced meals to students.

Fresh vegetables and fruit are a part of the lunch menu every day because healthy eating helps to create healthy minds.

Audrey Rowe, United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food & Nutrition Service Administrator, paid a visit to Gompers Elementary-Middle School on April 2 to discuss the USDA’s new school meal standards and healthy eating.

After enjoying lunch with kindergartners and second graders, and talking to students about the importance of healthy eating, Ms. Rowe said Detroit schools are among the best in nutrition for kids.

During her visit, Ms. Rowe spoke to staff members in the DPS Office of School Nutrition and saw the delivery of the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program. She also sat in on a classroom presentation where students were taught how to check nutrition labels, and viewed the new garden site at the school.

The DPS Office of School Nutrition is committed to supporting the educational development of students by providing healthy breakfast and hot, nutritional lunches to all students in grades K-12 at no charge in an effort to ensure all children receive nutritional meals, regardless of income.

On-site preparation ensures that meals are served hot in compliance with federal, state and local Health Department regulations. All menus adhere to the guidelines of the USDA.

The DPS Food Services Program also includes Meatless Mondays and many healthy vegetables and fruits, including

locally grown items like apples, blueberries and acorn squash. The Office of School Nutrition has also put fryers to rest and serves meals like glazed chicken on a whole wheat bun, turkey tacos with tortilla pieces, and vegetarian chili to name a few.

Through the Farm to School Program, the Office of School Nutrition collaborates with the local farming community. The program is currently offered at all DPS schools.

In addition to the delivery of fresh fruits and vegetables from local farmers, the program delivers additional benefits:

• Educational opportunities in the cafeteria• Classroom visits by local farmers• School garden opportunities

Name your favorite five fruits and vegetables and research the health benefits of eating them. Then draw a food plate showcasing your favorite healthy meal.

Students at Gompers Elementary-Middle School enjoy a healthy lunch with United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food & Nutrition Service Administrator Audrey Rowe, who visited in April to discuss new school menu guidelines.

Q&A

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