The Nevada Department of Wildlife Project Wild program has gained kudos from the national Project Wild office.

This widely-used education program is based on a curriculum developed by conservation educators and wildlife managers nationwide, and is supported by each state's fish and wildlife agency.

With help from the Clark County School District partnership office, the department correlated the activities contained in the Project Wild curriculum to the Nevada state education standards.

The state Department of Education developed these standards to guide teachers in planning their lessons. With the recent emphasis for classroom teachers to "teach to the standards," these correlations become invaluable for validating the effectiveness of the Project Wild program.

"The correlations will make both the Project Wild program and the department's overall wildlife education program more accessible to educators," said Margie Klein, Conservation Educator .

Currently, the correlations are to the life science standards, as this is where most of the activities match up. The standards for grades 3-5 are addressed, as that is the target audience for the department's wildlife education program. Correlations were done for both the Project Wild basic curriculum and the Project Wild Aquatic curriculum.

Project Wild can be used in an extra-curricular fashion or as a supplement to standard school-based curriculum. Any number of the Project Wild activities can be used to enhance and illustrate concepts in all school subjects -- science, math, English, social studies, art, music, and even physical education -- through scenarios using wildlife.

The activities can also be used as stand-alone lessons to teach about wildlife and the environment.

Although the department has offered Project Wild teacher training for years, the curriculum was not previously correlated to state standards, though it had been correlated to national standards.

Nevada now joins several other states whose Project Wild curricula are correlated to their own state standards. Josetta Hawthorne, executive director of the Council for Environmental Education, which administers the Project Wild curriculum, said that the news of the correlations being done "was a delight to see."

She added that the national office will add Nevada to the list of states that have updated correlations.

Clark County School District teachers can find the correlations on the school district's Web site, under Beyond the Classroom, on the Nevada Department of Wildlife page. Other educators can find them on the department Web site, www.ndow.org.

The department conducts Project Wild classes each spring and fall. Registration for classroom teachers is through the Clark County School District's Pathlore system on the internet.

Educators who are not part of the school district should call Margie Klein at 1-702-486-5127x 3502 or via e-mail at mbklein@ndow.org.