Here is recent article about beavers in the UK newspaper - The Guardian. This is a classic example of how a lack of appreciation for ecological history leads to ignorance. The journalist tries to compare the ecological consequences of North American beaver that have been introduced to southern South America some 50 years ago with the reintroduction plans of European beaver to the UK - where they were present just a couple of hundred years ago! Beavers were an important ecosystem driver in Europe for millennia; we should be reintroducing them when and where we can. North American beaver are invasive to South America and are an ecological disaster. Take home message: history informs our conservation strategies.
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The key term here is historical biogeography, and it's good for kids to be introduced to it. It's important for kids to know how plants and animals migrated over space and time. Only if we teach evolution and its related sciences can we do this. And only if we teach evolution will it make sense. Kids will be even more awestruck at the world we have today. They'll also know why we need to protect the native ecosystems that were here before Europeans got here and why those native ecosystems usually represent greater biodiversity than do alien-dominated systems.
Historical biogeography certainly seems like an area we all could benefit from studying a lot more. A couple of great examples of this is Charles C. Mann's "1491" and Farley Mowat's "Sea of Slaughter".
I presume that a better understanding of our deeper ecological history will also dispell the notion that the planet resides within an narrow and ideal temperature range that we should strive to achieve and actually try to contro. Hopefully our leaders and planners would take proper measures when building infrastructure for the future.