Tree-mendous effort
Primary schools get on board with planting project
Children at five primary schools in Stirling have been busy planting 75 saplings in their school grounds as part of a national campaign from Royal Zoological Society of Scotland ( RZSS) and Clydesdale Bank.
Pupils at Kippen, Balfron, Aberfoyle, Crianlarich and Callander primary schools were visited by the ‘Wild About Scotland’ bus last week and each given 15 trees to plant.
It is hoped more than 420 trees will be planted across the country over the next 12 months.
A recent addition to the Wild About Scotland campaign, it is seen as a way to help leave a lasting green legacy with schools across Scotland, with the additional bonus of offsetting carbon emissions against the mobile education centre currently touring the country.
An estimated 60 trees are required to grow for 100 years in order to offset the Wild About Scotland bus’s annual carbon footprint.
Wild About Scotland educates the next generation of conservationists about the importance of protecting Scottish wildlife.
The bus visited the various schools throughout the week to teach pupils about Scottish native species, their habitats and environments and what they can do to protect them.
Sessions are delivered by a dedicated education team from RZSS on board a customised double-decker, which has been transformed from a Stagecoach passenger bus into a fully functional mobile classroom, with capacity to accommodate up to 26 children at once.
At the end of the lessons, pupils were given trees native to Scotland to plant in the school’s grounds.
The trees have been donated by the Woodland Trust and are delivered by the Wild About Scotland bus to schools across the country.
Chris West, CEO of the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, said: “The Wild About Scotland project has been running for over a year- and- a- half now, across nearly all of the regions in Scotland.
“As the natural world is all intertwined, on many levels it is fitting for the Wild About Scotland bus to leave the schools they visit with an additional green legacy alongside the knowledge the team imparts on Scotland’s wildlife ecosystem.”
Wild About Scotland was launched in August 2014 through a partnership between Clydesdale Bank and RZSS.
Since then, more than 326 budding conservationists in the Stirling region alone have taken part.
The Wild About Scotland bus has visited more than 200 schools in total with more than 10,000 pupils getting on board with wildlife conservation efforts.
Clydesdale Bank propositions and marketing director Helen Page said: “It’s important to engage the next generation in conservation at an early stage in order to safeguard the long term future of our wildlife and our partnership with RZSS is playing a pivotal role in helping do this.
“By providing trees to schools visited, we can involve the children at a practical level in addition to offsetting carbon emissions.”
More i n f o rmat i o n at http:// www. cbonline. co. uk/ wildaboutscotland.