Question: What made you interested in pearl mussels? and if you won what would you do with the money?

Karen answered on 6 Nov 2018:

Hiya, thanks for your question 🙂 I used to see the pearl mussel shells on the side of the river near our farm. I never knew what they were though! When I went to college I did a project on the freshwater pearl mussel to find out more about it! I have stayed interested in them because they are going extinct, this means that in a few years the freshwater pearl mussel could be completely gone from the world. This is unfortunate as they have been around since the time of the dinosaurs! I don’t want our generation to be the last to experience the freshwater pearl mussel. Unfortunately, even though they are going extinct, not many people know they exist! I would use the money to visit schools and teach them about this amazing animal, and how important it is to keep rivers clean so that they can survive 🙂 I like to do interactive things like build artificial fields so that school students can see how water flows off the land and into rivers, so I would put the money into putting things like that together.