Feedback welcome: Kids create 80 hand-drawn hellbender posters at expo to help raise awareness

Landon, left, and Adalynn were two of our random drawing winners of the kids Hellbender Poster Awareness Contest at the Bloomsburg Early Bird Expo in late January.

As a way to engage families about the plight of the Eastern Hellbender and educate the next generation about the threats our state amphibian is facing, the Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association held a kids Hellbender Awareness Poster Contest at its Early Bird Sports Expo booth late in January at the Bloomsburg Fairgrounds.

Through the four days of the expo, we received 80 hand-drawn and colored posters by kids ranging in age mostly between five and 10. Several prizes were given out at the end of the show randomly to those who participated, but we felt it was important to showcase their work beyond the expo.

The Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association's booth included a section about the Eastern Hellbender, including an info sheet and to-scale lifelike model of a hellbender (shown below). The hellbender is our country's largest amphibian species, growing upwards of two-plus feet in length and weighing up to four to five pounds.

An estimated 95 percent of the Eastern hellbender's habitat within the greater Susquehanna watershed has been lost to various waterway issues, including sedimentation, pollution and other concerns. The hellbender also breathes through its skin, making it highly susceptible to contaminants. They are the "canary in the coal mine" in terms of local water quality. 

​The Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association has joined with several other groups to help push the US Fish and Wildlife Service to reconsider its lack of an endangered or threatened status for this cool creature.

Below are 80 kid-created posters from the Early Bird Sports Expo. We would like to honor a few more of the kids for their hard work on the posters. Please use the form after the posters to tell us which ones you especially liked. We will give out a few random prizes to those who help give feedback on the hellbender posters.

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Comments about the posters ...

"It is great to show that you can care about a creature even if it is not as cute and cuddly as a teddy bear. Hellbenders are like a canary in a coal mine: if they cannot survive, there is a problem with water quality, just as once canaries were taken into deep mines as a way to test whether the air was safe for the miners. I hope you and your family will think about what you can do in your daily lives to help keep water clean!" -- Ann Fisher, of Selinsgrove, MSRKA Board Secretary and Treasurer.

"Keep engaging with nature! Take every opportunity to get outside to experience the wonder of the wild. Learn all you can to bring hope and health to all the world's creatures and the environment! Keep up the GREAT work." -- Sharon Wagner, of Lewisburg


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