Students embrace Conservation Week
New Zealand is on its way to raising a generation of conservationists.
Conservation Week, running from October 14 to 22, will result in more than 23,000 children across 800 classrooms spending at least an hour each day learning about conservation. More than 100 schools in Auckland will participate.
The education programme is an initiative run by Squawk Squad, with help from Forest and Bird, Zealandia, Predator Free NZ and Department of Conservation (DOC). It will teach kids, between years five and 10, about native birds and what effect pests are having on them.
Squawk Squad is an Auckland business that brings conservation to people by connecting them to rat traps through an app, which sends a notification to their mobile device every time a pest is killed. Squawk Squad co-founder Fraser McConnell said the goal was to foster more conservation engagement to help make New Zealand predator free. Forest and Bird estimates 25 million native birds are killed every year by pests like rats, possums and stoats, and 80 per cent of our native species are in trouble.
Last year the Government set a target to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050, formally adopting a target to eradicate all pests that threaten New Zealand’s native birds.
‘‘The kids are so important. At a grass roots level they can educate their whanau and they’re the ones who are going to be around in 2050,’’ McConnell said.
In the classroom lessons kids will make paper tunnels to track rats, practise bird watching and identifying different bird species, and analyse predator control methods.
DOC education manager Anita Anderson said she was delighted to see so many children had signed up and the week was on track to be the biggest ever.
’’There is a lot of research that shows developing connections to nature in children develops lifelong values and behaviours,’’ Anderson said.
Quality conservation education would help kids learn how to take action and contribute to solving our conservation challenges, she said.
The classroom that recruited the most people to help fund Squawk Squad traps would be crowned New Zealand’s environment champions, and be flown to Auckland to see how predator trapping works in the bush.