An Education Initiative Around the Aorangi Forest Park

Today’s school pupils will be the next generation of conservationists, and the Aorangi Restoration Trust wants to enthuse them about what they are doing and why, at the same time helping them to achieve core curriculum requirements. With these goals in mind, an education initiative involving Pirinoa and Kahutara Schools was recently launched, made possible with funding from Fonterra’s Grass Roots Fund.
The schools will be meeting their educational obligations and students will be enjoying themselves, which has to be a win-win arrangement. It will make learning real for the students and be motivating for those who might otherwise struggle with the constraints of a classroom. At the same time, the project will instil an understanding, as Bob Burgess, Project Manager of the Aorangi Restoration Trust explains, “of the value of our actions to the area’s ecology and, significantly, to the ecosystem services it provides (fresh air and water) on which our lives and livelihoods depend”.

The initiative is based on the philosophy of learning by doing and has been developed with principals Clare Crawford of Kahutara and Troy Anderson of Pirinoa Schools. Both are supportive of being involved with the Aorangi Restoration Trust are keen to have their students involved.

The project will centre on predator control, learning about it by doing it. This will help to achieve restoration and conservation goals in and around the Aorangi Forest Park, an area of over 33,000 ha. Bob Burgess explains that “ pupils will make decisions about where to place traps and what baits will attract different predators, trapping predators of different kinds, learning health and safety, monitoring catches and animal movements using digital strike counters and trail cameras and, over time, writing reports, making presentations and above all learning why it’s being done”.
 
Perhaps unexpectedly, the various curriculum areas to be covered in this education initiative include English, health, maths and statistics, science, social sciences and technology. South Wairarapa school teacher and birding tour operator Denise MacKenzie will lead the project, liaising with schools to ensure curriculum goals are being achieved. Denise is full of enthusiasm for the project, and says that she sums it up as “boosting birdlife by busting predators”. Years 5 to 8 will be involved initially, with the oldest students teaching and training younger ones. As Denise says, “If we only worked with Year 8 children, they will leave primary school and we would have to start all over again”. Initially the children will be setting the Good Nature traps around their schools with a goal to make their own schools predator free. “What a magnificent goal this would be for all our schools in the area and maybe even NZ wide”, says Denise.

The Aorangi Restoration Trust was established in 2011 and those involved in Project Aorangi include adjoining landowners, other local farmers and fishers, iwi, local businesses, schools and community organisations, and volunteers and supporters both local and regional from as far afield as Marton, Havelock North and Wellington city. The Trust is in the process of encircling an area of 33,000ha in and around the Aorangi Forest Park with traplines to prevent predators moving in and out. In August 2014, the area received the first of three aerial drops of 1080 poison, targeted at controlling possums. The next drop will be mid-next year, 2017.
Local children will now be part of this major and important initiative, playing their part in helping to make the Aorangi Forest Park predator free, and learning vital skills both in key curriculum areas and in the wider world of conservation.