Animais da fauna silvestre mantidos como animais de estimação

Abstract

This work presents an environmental education program tried on 45 students, in grades 5th and 6th, at João XXIII State Grade School, in São João do Polêsine, state of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. The project consists of a series of questions asked of people from the local community who keep animals taken from their wild life and kept as pets in domestic environment. Two sensibilization talks were carried on with the students. The first one addressed the importance of animals in their wild settings and clarified the differences between wildlife, being it native or foreign, and domestic animals. The second one was aimed at bringing information on the legal aspects of having an animal taken from its wild life to be kept as a pet. The main result of this work is the realization that students really become sensible and aware of the problem and that such sensibilization is partially due to the process of learning in the classroom settings, which includes notions on environmental education, thanks to the work done by the Science teachers.