Abstract:

The beauty of the world is directly linked to the species inhabiting it. There are thousands of species that make the world a beautiful place with such a great diversity of ecosystems. All of them are crucial and play a fundamental role in the maintenance and balance of earth ecosystems. Unfortunately, we are facing a significant decline in biodiversity, representing a dangerously high risk for survival on our planet. Humans are the main cause of this decline, with deforestation, habitat destruction, pollution, resource exploitation, introduction of invasive species, and climate change being the major activities causing this alarming decline. The consequences of biodiversity decline are terrifying. It is the species surrounding humans that provide essential services for their survival, such as clean water and air, nutrient recycling, and climate regulation, among many others. Thus, compromising biodiversity also jeopardizes the survival of human beings.
It is necessary a growing environmental awareness as well as to raise scientific literacy of populations and societies about this issue in addition to governmental efforts. By understanding the value of biodiversity and the impacts of their actions, individuals can make informed decisions and support conservation.
The university degree in Applied Biology at Minho University (Portugal) has, in its last year, a Project curriculum unit where students perform a supervised individual project with the main objective of developing and applying specific knowledge and skills, and getting the transversal skills necessary for the development of a scientific work. In this context, the student author of this work developed and implemented - for 60 students aged from 12 to 16, at their school - the iniciative “Ask for Science?! – From Cell to Being: The Magic of Biodiversity“, providing practical and interactive activities on cells, microbiology, biodiversity and preservation. “Red Alert! - Biodiversity in Danger” was one of the activities and aimed to demonstrate the need for species conservation, emphasising the need to protect all species as they are crucial for the proper functioning of ecosystems. This activity is a game where participants receive different playing cards of animals and plants species and a a conservation status scale from the Red List of the IUCN - International Union for Conservation of Nature (https://www.iucnredlist.org/). The challenge is, knowing the main threats and the geographical distribution of the species, to “guess” their conservation status - Least Concern, Near Threatened, Vulnerable, Endangered, Critically Endangered, Extinct in the Wild and Extinct. As this activity proved to be one of the most relevant and engaging - as we could observe during the implementation an analysis of the results of the survey among the students - the new goal is to offer, next September 29, the activity in European Researchers' Night (ERN) that has the theme “Sciever- Science for Everyone” - Sustainability and Inclusion. The activity will be redesigned to be implemented as a 30 minutes workshop, for generic public, in groups of 20 people. We hope that this workshop will allow to learn more easily how to catalogue endangered species as well as to know and deal with their main threats! Our slogan is: come and find out if your favourite animal is endangered!

Keywords:

Biodiversity, Non-formal & informal education, Science for society.