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2008 Junior Ranger Essay Contest Winners
First Prize
Peter Rosen
State: Utah
Saving the environment sounds big, but there are simple steps you can take at home to save the environment and national parks and the best part is they aren’t even hard. One of these things is riding your bike to anywhere that you can. Walking works just as well. Doing this helps because it doesn’t pollute and pollution is bad for the environment. Another easy way to help the environment is to turn off the lights. As you walk out of a room all you have to do is reach over and press a switch, it’s as easy as that. Another way to save energy by turning off the lights is not using them in the first place. If it’s bright outside why not just open a window and use natural light instead of wasting energy? Wasting energy hurts the environment in two ways. One, it pollutes because most of our energy comes from fossil fuels, and two, you get those fossil fuels by mining, which doesn’t exactly help the area you’re mining environmentally. Besides simple things you can do at home there are other things that are just as easy that you can do at the national parks. I live in Utah so the first thing that comes to mind is something I learned at Arches. Stay on the trail. In Arches they have cryptobiotic soil that takes thousands of years to grow. One step off the trail and you just demolished thousands of years of work. Another thing is to look instead of having to touch. It’s one thing to admire nature’s work and it’s another to examine it with your fingers and ruin nature’s work. There are some things that you can do at home and at the parks, not littering for example. Take the few steps to the garbage can; don’t just dump it where you are. Recycle, recycle, recycle. This is one of the most effective ways to help the environment. It helps in two ways. The first is that it doesn’t mess up the environment by cutting down trees, etc. The second is that you don’t have to take all the energy to turn trees into paper; you just have to use enough energy to turn paper into paper. Recycling saves the earth’s environment and it helps us have resources longer. If you’re headed off to a national park it’s best to be educated about it. This way you know things that you should and should not do to help the park. You can then have a fun and environmentally friendly trip. The environment is important and we, as humans have the ability to save or destroy the wonderful things that surround us. Saving it cannot be just one person’s efforts. It has to be everyone working together, and if we all work together we can turn over a new leaf for the environment and help preserve our national parks.
Second Prize
Logan Clark
State: Illinois
There are multiple ways to turn over a new leaf for our environment. National parks protect landmarks, preserve cultural & historical artifacts, provide homes for wildlife and provide a place of enjoyment for all. Some of the ways I thought of to turn over a new leaf for our environment and preserve our National Parks are with additional litter programs, increasing educations at our schools, and additional games to increase the desire to explore our national parks. It is important to keep our National Parks pristine, as they were before modern human influence. The Junior Ranger Program is influencing children and their families to pick up litter and some National Parks have recycling facilities. However, at one park I noticed they lacked enough trash cans and cigarette receptacles. This is important because I have seen cigarette butts and other trash scattered everywhere. My brother and I picked up the trash and we spoke to a ranger about having trash cans at each bus stop in the park. Also I think the NPS should increase fines for littering and have a litter report hotline, so if we see a person littering we can report it. We could celebrate National Parks Week, where rangers could come to schools across the country and inform students about National Parks and the environment. I, for instance, live in southern Illinois and have been to many National Parks and Monuments. Many of my classmates have not had the wonderful opportunities I have. I try to share my experiences with them but I feel they don t understand. This would help them to have knowledge of the parks and the environmental impact that we have on them. I think board games should be developed to educate people about our environment and National Parks. There is National Parks Monopoly, which has already been created. But there could be National Parks Chess with pictures of different parks on the tiles. There could be monuments like the Statue of Liberty as the queen, the Washington Monument as the king, Old Faithful as the bishop, Mesa Verde as the rook, and the Arch at Jefferson National Monument for the knight. In addition, I personally would like to see a NP Jeopardy and trivia game also created. They could also make new games for National Park and environmental awareness. This would educate and be fun. I have had a wonderful time going to numerous National Parks throughout the United States. I love the general feeling that I am at an area in the US that I have read about, seen on TV and learned about in school- and I am there! It is important to me to preserve these parks for my children to see. I want them to be able to experience them like I did- not just study them in books.
Third Prize
Tori Mills
State: Kentucky
What could I do to help preserve national parks and wildlife? Many things. But the one thing I could do that would have the greatest effect would be (get ready for this) to write a song. You know how, when you hear a catchy song on the radio, it gets caught in your head? How it keeps going on over and over and over, making you think about it over and over and over? Well, I had the song “Unwritten” caught in my head the other day, and I did just that. I thought about it and thought about it until I thought, “Hey, what if someone wrote and composed a song about preserving wildlife and national parks and actually played it to the public! That way, it could get caught in many other different people’s heads, and maybe they’d end up doing something to help!” Then I thought, “What if I was that someone!” I don’t want to boast, but I am an exceptionally grand writer. I would call the song “Help Each Other”. Its chorus would go something like this:
Na-ture was put here to he-lp the peo-ple.
Peo-ple were put here to help na-ture too.
It’s already been said and done.
The work we’ve got has already begun.
If people will do, then nature should too.
Help the other, help each other!
Not only that, but I play drums, my great aunt plays piano, and my cousin plays guitar. Also, singing runs in my family (even if it passed me by). So I probably could compose the song when it’s written. After I’m done composing the song, I could send the song to a radio station that I listen to. This idea might sound completely far- fetched, but the radio station I know played a song written and composed by a twelve year old girl for Christmas. If my song is good enough, and since they played her song, they would probably play my song too! Thank you for listening, and stay tuned in the future for my song!
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