La Trobe MP Jason Wood helps celebrate the success of The Basin Primary School’s powerful owl experts.By Ed Merrison
ENVIRONMENTAL awareness can be a real hoot, as awardwinning students from The Basin Primary School discovered recently.
La Trobe MP Jason Wood visited the students on Tuesday, 25 October to congratulate them on their victory in the Victorian Upper Division in the Hands On for Habitat Awards
The program, a partnership between the Australian Government and Cadbury Yowie, encouraged primary students to learn how they can help protect their unique animals and plants.
Class groups were invited to create artworks of a threatened species and submit them with research work about the species’ habitat.
One of the students had spotted a powerful owl in the school grounds and a pair of the rare birds can be seen nesting in The Basin’s Wicks Reserve.
This led the school to make the powerful owl, the largest of all the forest owls with a distinctive deep double hoot, the subject of their study.
The owl is considered threatened in Victoria and New South Wales, mainly due to land clearing.
The students appeared on Channel 10’s Totally Wild nature program in September and, according to class teacher and project coordinator Christine Donaldson, they have enjoyed the project and their success.
“They’ve loved it,” she said.
“They’ve been very enthusiastic throughout and this has certainly reinforced their knowledge of how to support protected species.”
The students’ environmental efforts have earned the school a $200 gift voucher to purchase native plants and a framed National Threatened Species Day poster featuring their own artwork.
During his visit, Mr Wood quizzed the students on their knowledge of the powerful owl and rewarded their expertise with Yowie soft toys.
