Enviro Leaders Celebrate Biodiversity on World Environment Day
World Environment Day provided the perfect opportunity for Enviro Leaders to come together and learn fun educational activities to take back to their own schools and share with others.
Tamariki from Fairhall, Grovetown, Springlands, St Mary’s and Redwoodtown Schools spent the afternoon taking part in four hands-on activities. The activities were designed to help them understand why biodiversity matters and how they can help protect it in their own school grounds and communities.
Angela introducing the pests
Pest Dectectives
At Pest Detectives, they investigated some of New Zealand’s introduced predators and learned about the impacts on our native wildlife. Thanks to the team at Picton Dawn Chorus, students were able to get up close with taxidermy specimens of some of our introduced pests. However, these were quickly overshadowed when two beautiful native birds, a ruru and a weka, (also taxidermy) made an appearance and captured everyone’s attention.
Mapping Our School Biodiversity
At Mapping Our School Biodiversity, tamariki, with maps and coloured stickers in hand, identified biodiversity hotspots, areas with little biodiversity, and places with potential for improvement. The activity encouraged students to think about what makes a good habitat and how they could enhance biodiversity back at their own schools.
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- Finding biodiversity hot spots
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- Mapping biodiversity
Bird Feeders
Making Bird Feeders from pine cones, flour paste and birdseed reminded students that caring for our wildlife doesn’t always require large projects, small actions can have a meaningful impact too.
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- Choosing pine cones
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- Bird feeder flour and water paste
Hop or Drop
The final activity, Hop or Drop, was a noisy game inspired by musical chairs that showed how quickly native species such as Hamilton’s Frog can become threatened when habitats shrink and predators are introduced.
As we celebrated World Environment Day, we were all reminded that biodiversity is all around us and that even small actions can make a big difference in creating healthier habitats for our native plants, insects, birds and other wildlife.
The Enviro Leaders at St Mary’s School have since gone on to plan an afternoon of activities for the whole school to learn more about the environment around them and the amazing wildlife that make up the unique biodiversity we have here in Marlborough.