IN THE CLASSROOM:An eye-opening look at the environment

NEWPORT BEACH — Thirdgraders from Huntington Beach’s Hope View Elementary School came to the Environmental Nature Center here on Friday to learn about an animal, but they weren’t sure at first which one.

Naturalist Leslie Helliwell gave them hints. “It’s native to California,” she said.

A bird, they guessed. Nope, it’s a land animal.

Maybe a coyote?, they tried. It’s bigger than a coyote, she told them.

A bear!, someone confidently responded. No, smaller than a bear.

Finally, Helliwell revealed the mystery animal, a cougar — which is also called a mountain lion, puma or catamount.

Through a series of activities, students learned what cougars need to live, their function in the food chain and what happens when people move into their habitat.

First, they built a model habitat with toy figures to represent the different components, starting with dirt, sun, air and water. Then they added plants, then herbivores, such as rabbits.

Next came smaller carnivores — foxes, for example — and finally, the cougar.

“His job is to make sure that everything else stays in check,” Helliwell said.

But suddenly, along come people, represented by a toy car, and they start using up the land, taking away animals’ food and shelter. The mountain lions are left hungry and squeezed between urban areas, and eventually people shoot them. What happens to the ecosystem?, Helliwell asked.

“It’s gone!” Braydon Salzman said.

Before their visit here, students already learned a bit about ecosystems and endangered animals, but they’ve been most struck by hearing about the impact people have on the environment, teacher Allison Sanderlin said.

Helliwell reminded students after they played a game called “Cougarland” that not all things harmful to the animals were caused by people — wildfires, for example — and people did help the animals in some ways, such as by creating nature preserves.

Sanderlin said she tells students how they can help the environment by picking up trash on the beach or using every page of their notebooks so they don’t waste paper.

“It’s not hopeless. We’ve just got to think a little more about what we’re doing,” Helliwell told them. “Sometimes people forget we’re not the only things on the planet.”