Squirrels do not hibernate during the Winter, so they have to keep a buried cache of nuts dispersed around the area, which they dig up later to eat. And although the squirrels do find the majority of the nuts (tests have found that grey squirrels find at least 90% of the cache on average), they still do forget where some the nuts are, which grow to become trees. With the amount of squirrels in the world, the small amount of nuts each squirrel forgets about can really add up. In addition, squirrels are crucial to the survival of nut-bearing trees such as walnut, acorn, and hickory trees. This is because those nuts are so heavy that they don't really blow with the wind, and therefore without something to carry them away and plant them in the soil, they would just land on the forest floor and degrade rather than grow into trees. Hetzler, Paul. “Forgetful Squirrels, Agents of Reforestation.” NCPR, North County Public Radio, 12 Nov. 2017, blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org/allin/2017/11/12/forgetful-squirrels-agents-of-reforestation/.
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"The Amazon, the planet’s largest rain forest, lost at least 17% of its forest cover in the last half century due to human activity—mainly clearing trees to create new or larger farms and ranches."
“Forests.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, www.worldwildlife.org/initiatives/forests. If you are reading this, you are probably thinking of submitting a drawing to be featured for a day in our deforestation drawing challenge! If you don't know what I am talking about, please go to the "Events" page for more information. Anyway, in order to submit, please read these guidelines.
First and foremost, you will need to include this information: -Your Name: This is so that we can credit you for your work. If you do not want your name to be shared with your drawing, please write "anonymous" in the name box. -Your Email: If your drawing is accepted, we will need to email you letting you know, and to show you when it is published. We promise that we will not share or sell this to anyone. -Your Drawing: Of course, you will need to share your drawing! Remember that it must relate to the deforestation fact that you also need to share. The drawing must be your own original artwork. -The Deforestation Fact that Goes With that Drawing: As I have said many times now, you will need to also submit a deforestation fact that relates to your drawing. It cannot be a fact that we have already used for the challenge. Make sure it is from a reliable source, which leads us into our next point. -Fact Citation: Last but definitely not least, you will need to cite your source. This is very important, and if you don't do this or you don't do this correctly, then you will not be published. Your source needs to be reliable, and you must cite it correctly in MLA8 style. You can use EasyBib to cite your source for you, or you can do it yourself. Just remember to fill in as much information as you can find and to always double-check that everything is correct. Thank you so much for reading through the guidelines! Now you are ready to create and submit your drawing. Please submit your drawing through this form. If it is accepted, you will get an email within the first few days. You will be emailed again when the drawing is published. If you do not get an email within the first few days, then you are probably rejected. Submissions open up today, 8/5/2020, and end 8/12/2020. Welcome to the our new blog! Here we will be posting about the environment, animal abuse, and how you can help. We will also be posting daily drawings and a deforestation fact that relates to that drawing from August 8, 2020-August 14, 2020. Please tune in for future posts, and we'll see you soon!
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