Teaching Sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

15 minutes

Tune In: The journey of Mufasa

20 minutes

Find Out: Planning a journey across Australia

20 minutes

Take Action: A corridor for wildlife

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

understand that animals need to travel for food, water and shelter
know that wildlife corridors can help address habitat fragmentation
recognise Google Maps as a tool for mapping and planning journeys.

Success criteria

Students can:

create and edit maps
explain some of the features and visual elements of Google Maps
demonstrate how habitat fragmentation could be addressed through wildlife corridors.

Tune In: The journey of Mufasa

Step 1

Begin by introducing the story of Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” to your students. Consider sharing the following trailer:

Mufasa: The Lion King Trailer - (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJwcDX-8Ytc)

Invite students to share what they think the story of “Mufasa: The Lion King” is about. Use the following synopsis to clarify their understanding:

“Mufasa: The Lion King” enlists Rafiki to relay the legend of Mufasa to young lion cub Kiara, daughter of Simba and Nala. The story introduces Mufasa as an orphaned cub, lost and alone until he meets a sympathetic lion named Taka - the heir to a royal bloodline. The chance meeting sets in motion an expansive journey of an extraordinary group of misfits searching for their destiny, and their bonds will be tested as they work together to evade a threatening and deadly foe.

Emphasise the word ‘journey’ from the film synopsis and invite students to suggest what they think it means. Explain that it describes an act of travelling from one place to another. In this movie, Mufasa and his friends take a journey across the continent of Africa, travelling through a number of different countries and landscapes.

Step 2

Display Google Maps (maps.google.com/) on the board and explain to students that they will use Google Maps to plot the journey taken in the movie.

Instructions:

Ensure Google Maps is set to the base layer of maps.
Start your journey at Etosha National Park in Namibia.
End your journey at Saadani National Park in Tanzania.
Select ‘walking’ as your mode of transport.
Record the distance between these two points and make a note of this distance; you will be referring to this in the next part of the activity.

Numeracy extension:

Your students can practice converting this distance into informal measurement units: A lion is around 3 metres from its nose to the tip of its tail. How many lions would it take to stand in a line to cover this distance? African elephants are around 6.5 metres long. How many elephants would it take to cover this distance?
Your students can practice converting this distance into time: Lions can cover an average of 12km per day when they are travelling. How long would it take a lion to complete this journey? Is that more or less than a human, according to Google Maps?

Step 3

Switch to the satellite layer and discuss the different colours you see in the landscape and what they might mean (e.g. green means there is vegetation, while brown means the ground is much drier). Can you see any lakes or rivers? Are there any other interesting landscape features? What about cities and towns? You might have to zoom in and out to take a closer look.

Ask your students, ‘Which of these landscape features could pose a challenge to a lion on a journey?’. They might suggest:

big rivers would be difficult to cross (like the Cubango, or Zambezi Rivers)
flood plains would be dangerous in wet seasons and provide no shelter in dry seasons (like Masarwa, Botswana, or Bontunga, Zambia)
mountains and hills are tough to climb (like the Udzungwa Mountains in Tanzania)
towns and communities wouldn’t want lions where people live and might have big fences and other defences to deter lions
they would need to find the right habitat for hunting and there are long stretches of the journey where this would be difficult.

Step 4

This is a big journey! Ask your students, ‘Why would a lion need to make a journey like this?’

When a lion makes a journey like this in real life, it’s called ‘dispersal’ and it happens when a lion is looking for a good place to live, or a good ‘habitat’. Ask your students, ‘What do you think a lion needs in a habitat? What makes it a good place to live?’ Keep a list of your student’s suggestions. They might suggest:

good water for drinking
safe, shady places for resting
plenty of animals to hunt
a good place for hunting, like an open grassland or savanna
other lions (since they are the world’s only social cat!).

Find Out: Planning a journey across Australia

Step 1

Now invite students to imagine that Mufasa was going to take a journey of the same distance in Australia, starting from your school! Again use Google Maps to plot the journey. You will use your school as the starting point, but you will have to work with students to guess where the endpoint will be. Refer back to the distance taken by Mufasa across the African continent that you recorded in the previous activity and have a guess about where you might end up in Australia using this same distance. You might have to make a few guesses and adjust your journey to roughly find a journey of the same distance that Mufasa took.

Step 2

Again, explore the landscape features of this journey using satellite images. What do students already know about some of the landscapes and habitats that they would encounter on this journey?

For example, does the journey travel across deserts, over hills and mountains, or through forests? What about rivers and lakes? What about cities and towns? What other landscape features might you come across? If you zoom right in, can you see where there are fences around farmlands and houses? Use Google Maps to explore some of these features.

Explain to students that going on a journey like the ones explored on the map of Africa and Australia is pretty exciting. However different landscape features would pose challenges for animals on a journey. Let’s think about these.

Step 3

On the whiteboard, you will talk and draw students through the following scenario:

1. For animals to move across the landscape, they need habitats that are connected (assuming the climate and sources of food suit them).

If your students need a concrete example, ask them to think of a koala for this scenario.

Action: Draw a birds-eye view of a forest on the board with lots of trees and a creek (see below):

2. In Australia, colonisation saw the land being cleared for farms, houses and towns.

Action: Remove some of the trees and add in some houses and a farm. Leave the creek where it is (see below):

3. Over time, there has been more development, and while we often leave nature reserves, there is no easy way for animals to move from one pocket of habitat to another. Ask your students, ‘Why might animals need to move from one pocket of habitat to another?’ Your students may suggest:

to find food if food in their current habitat is getting hard to find
to find a new home if their current habitat is getting crowded or is becoming unsafe
to find a mate so there will be more animals in the future
to find water if water is scarce in their current habitat.

Action: Remove more trees and add more buildings and a road(see below):

4. When the habitats are broken up in this way, it is known as ‘habitat fragmentation’. This is not just happening here but all over the world, including across the continent of Africa where Mufasa makes his journey. Ask your students, ‘What problems do you think habitat fragmentation makes for animals who are on a journey?’ Your students may suggest:

needing to cross busy roads
encountering animals that could be dangerous to them, like birds of prey, cats or dogs
not being able to find food or water
not being able to find a safe place to sleep and rest.

The good news is that we can do something about it. People all over the world are working hard to create ‘wildlife corridors’. This happens when some cleared landscapes are revegetated and then connected with pockets of habitat to make what look like animal highways.

Action: Add in some tree corridors and revegetate areas of your cleared land (see below):

This gives animals a chance to move across the landscape to find the food, water, shelter and breeding partners that they need to survive.

Learning extension: You can also introduce your students to the concept of a wildlife bridge with this video:

Making a bridge attractive to animals | Discovery | Gardening Australia - (youtu.be/ZDvOzeWqPx4?si=NkpOphRf1OPxoJCK)

Take Action: A corridor for wildlife

Step 1

Students will now adjust a map to include wildlife corridors that support animals making a journey. Explain to students that it’s not just the long journeys like the ones in “Mufasa: The Lion King” that are important; small animals like birds, lizards, frogs and insects also make journeys and need food, water and shelter. In this activity, students will focus on a shorter, local journey.

Options:

You could provide students with a birds-eye view map of your local area and ask them to identify habitat pockets and consider options for connecting them with wildlife corridors.

Students could create their own map of a local area, marking and annotating a wildlife corridor, including features to help wildlife move safely.
You could use this map for students to edit and add to.

Students should add places for shelter, food and water on their maps and add annotations to show these features. This could be done as labels or as a legend.

Step 2

Once complete, invite students to share their maps with classmates and/or make a display of student maps around the theme ‘A journey through the wildlife corridors in our neighbourhood’.

Reflection

Invite students to consider the following questions through class discussion:

If Mufasa was really going to make the trip you plotted on your map, what advice would you give him about the journey? What would you tell him about food, water and shelter? Would you have any other tips for him?

Mufasa’s Journey

Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables

Mufasa’s Journey

Summary

Lesson Guides and Printables