HAZELRIDGE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
MANITOBA, CANADA

The students of Hazelridge Elementary School in Hazelridge, Manitoba, Canada, have been studying endangered species. As part of their study, they were given a special presentation on Mountain Gorillas.

Here, exactly in their own words, is what some of the kids of Hazelridge Elementary School had to say on the subject of what's happening to wildlife:

Sarah Carey


The mountain Gorilla is an endangered animal. With only 650 left of its kind. Think about how you would feel if you were enjoying a nice lunch and someone forced you to move. Well that is how the Mountain Gorilla feels. Think how you would feel if you were playing a game or doing anything with your family and someone came along and carelessly shot your baby. That would only happen occasionally to us but the Mountain Gorillas are forced to face these consequences almost every day. You may be reading this right now and thinking you will do something tomorrow. But tomorrow may be too late. Save the Mountain Gorilla. Stop pooching!

Laura

Please stop! Please stop poching Mountain Gorillas etc.  I realy hate it when people poch animals.  Even if it is that they want parts of their body for money.   Stop!!!   When I grow up I would like to care for animals and help them if they get hurt.   Please do not let war begin.   If people hate gorillas, Just leave them alone!

Save the polar bear.

Denys, Grade 5

Help the Panda Bear

All we want is to leave the gorillas alone and help save the reast of the gorillas and stop war and be friends.  War is a horribel thing to do.  It hurts things and pepel and we want to stop war!   And help the gorillas and to live in peace. Stop it!

Anson R. Andrew

I think mountain gorillas are just like humans, if you poach a gorilla it's like poaching us humans and that's the same with people taking away there homes.  Think of it?  How would you feel if somebody took your home away and the rest of your family.  Think hard.  I bet you wouldn't like it. Mountain Gorillas are now endangered species because of some of us.

Stop alegal hunting! Poor baby polar bears mirred for ther skin and bons.

Author Unknown

Leave the animals alone. They have a right to live as we do. They have been pushed around and forced out of their natural habitat. We humans have interfered enough, let them live their own lives. Do not disturb the delicate string of life.

Many animals like the Mountain Gorillas, Grizzly Bears and the Cheetah have been pushed to the point of on the verge of becoming extinct or completely gone. Poaching has been part of or responsible for many extinctions.

Save Bald Eagles

Hugh

The Siberian Tiger is so close to extinction that they are rarely seen. But poachers still hunt it never the less. But if they get cought they will get a very harsh sentence.

May-Ellen Wayne
The Great Escape

I was running away from the poachers. All of a sudden a net dropped over me and someone tied it up.   While they were taking me to a truck I heard one of them say "what should we use this one for?" and the other one, his partner, answered "let's take the fur for coats and dump the rest of him somewhere else."   And the other person replied "ok".   A little while later they threw me into a truck and drove away.

I woke up in a place that was really run-down.  The two people were gone.  Well, I better tell you a little about myself.  I am a mountain gorilla and just became the silverback recently.   A few days after I was chosen, people invaded our land.   We tried to escape, but we were all caught.   I bet all the others were experiencing the same thing I was.   Wait a minute the people were gone!   I can escape!   Why didn't I think of this before?   Well anyway time to escape!   I looked around, how can I escape this place?   I thought then I saw a window.   I stacked boxes to get to the window.   All of a sudden the door flew open and the two guys came in, grabbed me and pulled me down but I was too strong for them.   I reached up and punched them in the face.   Now I can escape.   I ran up the boxes, smashed the window and jumped out.   Behind me I could hear the two guys yelling.

To get back to the group I had to get to the mountain.   On the mountain I had to get to the bamboo forest.   And that is what I did.   It turned out the rest of the group escaped too, so life could maybe...just maybe...could get back to normal. But I still considered us very lucky.