I got upstaged by an eight year-old during Conservation Week and I’m stoked! The best ambassadors are often children and all the better for being local.
I was at the Maketu community information evening to give a presentation about the threatened NZ dotterel, but after Maketu school student Jayda Walters gave her presentation and her peers displayed their posters about protecting dotterel, there was little more I could tell the audience of approximately 20 locals.
The newly formed Maketu Ongatoro Wetlands group (MOW), arranged the evening to let locals know about their pest control and dotterel protection work on the Maketu spit, and to enlist their help.
The group also ran a poster competition for Maketu School that encouraged the students to learn about the threats to NZ dotterel and produce posters to educate the community about what they can do to help. It clearly worked because the students are now dotterel experts and hopefully will spread the word amongst their whanau.
Robert Parapata’s winning poster
Robert & Ames from Maketu School and Carole Long from Te Puke Forest & Bird show the winning posters
Great site but needs more photos. Us Maketu students would all like to thank-you soo thanks for the free dictionarys, um showing us how to make dotterel and most of all including us in the MOW group and all your events.
Thanks for everything you have done for us Jane thank-you.
Kia ora! great to see everyone working together alongside our Maketu tamariki to help educate the importance of looking after our environment. Great night full of interesting info and an excellent experience for the children who attended as well as presented. Tau ke Jayda!
Yes, Jayda was impressive and thanks to the MOW group for pulling the project together – keep up the great energy!!
We were quite amazed at the professional presentation that Jayda gave us, but you also were great, Katrina. Thaks to DoC for helping make the evening happen.