Paramount Ranch Science Festival Big Hit With Kids

As many as 2,000 people were expected to have attended the third annual science festival Saturday at , according to a report in the Ventura County Star. The event featured special presentations and hands-on demonstrations.

"Today, we want the public to come out and meet with our scientists who do the field research so people can understand what they do out in our mountains and islands," Lena Lee, data manager for the National Park Service, told the Star. "We have scientists here from our own parks and from the Los Angeles County Museum and Natural History and California Science Center."

As part of the experience, kids were given a card to obtain a stamp at six activities in order to claim a prize on their way out of the park, said the Star.

The event included a botany booth, a reptile and amphibian monitoring station, a booth about the water cycle, a herpetology station, a station on fossils and a mobile aquarium from the California Science Center, said the report.

In addition, a live diver, biological technician Kelly Moore, spoke about lobster and sea stars from inside a huge water tank, said the Star.

Joanne Moriarty, ecologist at the Carnivore Project, told the Star: "We work with bobcats, coyotes and mountain lions. We're here in the Santa Monica Mountains, which is a very urbanized environment, so a lot of our projects focus on how these animals interact with the urban environment and how it effects them. One of the things we do is trap and collar them so we can get information about them, their mortality, how much land they need and potential conflicts between these animals and humans."

Children also learned about native plants as well as reptiles and were given an opportunity to pet a rosy boa, said the Star.

To read the full story, click here.