School National Tree Day Activities 2021
Engaging youth with Landcare and encouraging environmental awareness
Collaborations - LP021-010
The issue
Engaging youth with Landcare and promoting environmental awareness is the key to encouraging local environmental stewards in our future generations. Connecting our local school and early educational groups with Planet Arks School National Tree Day was a great way to highlight the importance of Landcare and environmental awareness and allow each group to participate in a great national program with positive local environmental outcomes.
National Tree Day is sponsored by Toyota Australia and was co-founded in 1996 by Planet Ark and Olivia Newton-John. It has steadily grown into Australia's largest annual community tree planting and environmental protection event and our future goal is to turn this event into a yearly program for the local participating groups to ensure the message continues to spread.
Organising events with 8 different groups in 4 separate towns during busy times came with expected challenges, but technology and flexibility in planning allowed for this. The biggest issue was navigating on-ground activities during times of heightened COVID19 restrictions and unfortunately this meant that the schools had to run their own internal activities to celebrate the significance of the day.
The solution
Western Murray Land Improvement Group host Local Landcare Coordinators, with generous sponsorship from Murray River Council and Murray Irrigation Limited, supported 8 local school and early education centres with individual planting packs to support each group's involvement in Planet Arks School National Tree Day 2021. They worked with each group to ensure they received appropriate plant species for their individual planting events contributing to the School National Tree Day planting tally.
The 8 participating groups were Tooleybuc Central School, Moulamein Public School, Moulamein Preschool, Wakool Burraboi Public School, Wakool Preschool, Barham Public School, Barham High School and Barham Preschool.
The impact
Collectively 596 children participated and 464 native plants were supplied for planting locally. Children were actively involved in planting activities, as well as other activities promoting the importance of Landcare such as watching related videos, participating in a native species hunt and even taking some plants home for their own gardens!
Each group now has been given hardware to help in future environmental care and on-ground physical planting work at their centres. All are interested in participating in a similar program next year and in other relevant activities supported by Landcare.
Key facts
- 596 children from 8 school and early education centres participated
- 464 native seedlings planted