National Schools Tree Day has seen a burst of activity from students and the community, getting their hands dirty to clean up the environment and participating in landcare projects across the north.
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Students from Queechy High and the Northern Support School joined forces to plant more than 150 trees in the Queechy grounds.
The trees were grown by students of the Northern Support School in their Offshoots Program, where they propagate the trees from seed. Northern Support School Teacher, Sue Jacobs said the students were solely responsible for cultivating the plants. “For me the really important thing is that it demonstrates the capacity of our young people with disabilities in terms of what they can actually achieve,” said Ms Jacobs.
Grade eight Queechy students, Jason Maney and Blake Janssen, enjoyed participating in National School Trees Day. “It’s pretty good because you can return to the community and help the school out,” said Blake.
“[We’re] here to help the environment and get more animals to come here for it’s [sic] home,” said Mr Maney.
NRM North’s Tamar Facilitator, Megan Dykman, said getting children involved in community landcare programs is incredibly important. “It helps educate them about the importance of native vegetation and looking after the environment. They get to see biology and ecology in action and they also get to learn about the other benefits of native vegetation... But also, they can get their hands dirty and really do something for their local area,” said Ms Dykman.
Tamar NRM chose National Schools Tree Day to launch its Tamar Valley Rural Biodiversity and Landscape Learning Project.
The project was funded through the 20 Million Trees Programme, a collaboration between the Australian Government and the community to plant 20 million trees across Australia by 2020.
The Tamar Valley project will see 28,000 plants established on 65 hectares of private and public land. Both trees and understory plants will create biodiverse safety belts, regenerate degraded farmland to improve ecosystems and involve schools and the community to provide learning experiences.
The project got off to a cracking start, with students from Youngtown planting over 100 trees and shrubs on Friday to get the project off the ground.
