Earth Rangers
Earth Rangers is a Canadian environmental education and conservation non-profit aimed specifically at youth. The goal of the organization is to educate children and their families about biodiversity, inspire them to adopt sustainable behaviours, and empower them to become directly involved in protecting animals and their habitats. Earth Rangers currently has more than 140,000 members across Canada, and visits 800 elementary schools every year with an educational live animal show.
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History
Founded in 2004, Earth Rangers began as a local organization serving schools and community venues across the Greater Toronto Area. In 2011 the organization expanded across Canada, and since then has grown into a national organization of more than 40 staff and hundreds of volunteers.
Earth Rangers is the largest conservation organization in Canada by membership, with more than 140,000 Earth Rangers Members in every province and territory.
Programs
School Outreach
The Earth Rangers School Assembly is a presentation for Grades 1 to 6 that leverages the shared and innate connection children of all backgrounds have to animals. Through the power of live animal demonstrations, and positive, science-based information, the program educates students about the importance of protecting biodiversity, while highlighting diverse conservation initiatives across Canada. Throughout the show, students are introduced to four of the Earth Rangers Animal Ambassadors, such as Blue the Peregrine Falcon, Shelley the Painted Turtle, and Hudson the Eurasian Lynx. The program visits more than 800 schools across Canada each year.
Bring Back the Wild
Each year, Earth Rangers works with conservation partners to identify Canadian species that are facing threats in the wild. The organization then develops tangible projects to protect those animals, ranging from conservation research, to land acquisition, to habitat stewardship. Earth Rangers Members are encouraged to select one of the animals and start a fundraising campaign to help them.
Missions
The goal of this program is to educate and inspire children about biodiversity loss.
Facility
The Earth Rangers Centre is an advanced green building, certified LEED Platinum for Existing Buildings and Gold for New species.
The Earth Rangers Centre is located in Woodbridge, Ontario on the grounds of the Kortright Centre for Conservation. It is home to Earth Rangers’ staff and Animal Ambassadors, and is a showcase of leading edge sustainable building technology including energy metering, smart automation and controls, innovative water and wastewater management, solar generation, green roof, geothermal heating and cooling.
Ventilation
The Earth Rangers Centre was one of the first buildings in Canada to use displacement ventilation, and has the largest installation of earth tubes in North America. This ventilation system circulates air through diffusers located near the floor level and displaces the existing air into return ducts near the ceiling.
Data Centre
The Earth Rangers 9.3 square metre data centre was completed in December 2008. The data room uses storage servers from Pillar, Dell's processing servers, and virtual personal machines using VMware View software. Nortel's Power over Ethernet (PoE) switching facilitates the transfer of electrical power and data across the infrastructure.[1] Earth Rangers also participates in Compulsion's Green4Good program which works to combat the environmental impact of end-of-life technology products and support charities in need.[2]
Solar Electricity
The Earth Rangers Centre has two solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays in operation; both convert the sun's rays into standard voltage to be used by the building's systems. In the Earth Rangers Centre parking lot there is a 57.6 kWp dual-axis tracking array on six separate posts consisting of 54 Solgate 175 W panels, provided by Sentinel Power Systems. Each array follows the sun from east to west during the day, increasing output by up to 30 per cent over a fixed panel. Each panel has its own Enphase micro-inverter, further increasing the efficiency of the arrays and allowing real-time monitoring of the system on panel by panel basis. The second array is located on the aviary, a building that boasts a 28.08 kWp, designed and installed by Enviro-Energy Technologies Inc.[3] This offsets approximately 10% of the Earth Rangers Centre's annual needs.[4]
Heating and Cooling
The Earth Rangers Centre was one of the first 100% radiant heated and cooled buildings in North America. The building uses 22 km of REHAU radiant tubing, which was laid within the concrete floors and ceiling. The flow of a non-toxic, vegetable-based liquid (water/glycol) through these tubes causes the concrete to become thermally activated. In the warm seasons, cooled liquid is supplied to the concrete slabs. The heat from the computers, people and the sun is absorbed by the concrete, causing the cooled liquid in the tubing to warm up. The liquid is then cooled by rejecting heat to the ground source system or free cooled by directly coupling to the cooling tower. In the colder months, the glycol is warmed by the ground source heat pump before it is supplied to the slab system.
Animal ambassadors
The Earth Rangers Centre houses over 40 animals that act as Animal Ambassadors for the organization, including ring-tailed lemurs, red foxes, bald eagles, African servals, and American kestrels.