 Geneers and seniors from Pikeville High School's Zoology class joined with Pikeville Elementary students for the Exploring Our Backyard event which introduces kids to animal species in our area. It's important to know all of the living things that you have around you because then once you know about them then you're going to feel better about protecting them. It's Earth Day coming up this weekend, it's nice to reflect and think about all the things that live around us and how they help us and how we help them. With over 20 species to learn about in Pike County, students from Scott's Zoology class developed presentations and activities based on a given animal. So for each project we got we all went through them in class so we got to learn a little bit about everybody's project but it was really good you got a specific animal and you got to learn a little bit about it so now for me if I see a beaver on the side of the road I just can pick up on it like we've learned just multiple facts about it that can help us later on down the road whether we see an injured one or whatever the case may be. We are Pikeville Medical Center and we are an amazing place to work. Healthcare heroes of all types work here. All who deserve great rewards so while our heroes are working hard to take care of our patients and visitors we are taking care of them with top-tier benefits, higher pay rates and great sign-on bonuses so join our team today so what are you waiting for? Apply today! Incredible opportunities await at PMCjobs.org. As students lined up to learn about different species a hope from Scott and student Alex Rogers was the introduction of a more complex understanding of species and creating the interest for a possible career path. I'd hope that they would take away from this little experiment that we're doing just little things that they didn't know just little facts about different animals and everything like that just giving them a little bit more complex knowledge about these different animals what they can do and what they're like. I think science is the best but I'm a little biased and so it's nice to get kids interested in science when they're young so that they have that desire and that learning and then the kids who've never really been exposed to it maybe this is something that's going to be able to excite them and get them excited about science. As part of the event the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife displayed animals from a variety of different ecosystems natural resource specialist Brett Salyers says he hopes students develop an interest in local wildlife. We would like for him to get an interest want to come out to our project to the lake and get curious enough to get a conversation started with our parents and to find out that these animals can be seen even out at fish trap lake and to visit the lake. For Mountain Top News, I'm Joel Hodgell.