A percepção ambiental dos estudantes do ensino médio sobre unidade de conservação : Poconé - MT

Abstract

The creation of Protected Areas (PAs) is an important strategy to protect natural resources by use of the law. Under this context, the objective of the present study was to determine how much the students of the State High school Professor Eucaris Nunes da Cunha e Moraes know about conservation units. The school is located at Poconé municipality, Mato Grosso State. A set of objective questions was given to sixty high school students. The results show that 43% of students has heard about Protected Areas on television, 16% on the Internet, 30% at school, 8% other means such as at work, and 10% did not answer. When asked about the local conservation areas, 35% of students did not know if there are conservation unities in the city, and 3% assure that there are not, and 61% answered that there are. Approximately half of the students (46%) have not visited the area, and half (54%) of them have visited. Also, half of the students (46%) know that the kind of the conservation area in the city is the park and 35% also emphasized the existence of a park road. Regarding the number of conservation units in the municipality, 67% of participants indicated more than five units, and 40% do not know exactly. On the question of the primary purpose of a conservation area, 81% marked the option of preservation and conservation of natural resources, 6% leisure, 6% tourism, 8% do not know. Overall, the data reveal that most students have some knowledge about conservation areas, but it is a little confusing. Thus we suggest schools work on the environmental issue in a meaningful way for the students, that new subjects are incorporated into already gained knowledge structures, so subjects get new meanings for them, from the addition on their prior knowledge.