Project Overview

Albion Primary School’s ‘Bird watching, Nest Box Monitoring and Biodiversity Mural’ project set about growing awareness among students and parents alike about the importance of biodiversity and sustainability.

Building on the school community’s involvement in bird watching and monitoring over the past three years, Albion Primary School put their 2022 Victorian Junior Landcare and Biodiversity Grant towards purchasing each class a set of binoculars to allow even more students to monitor birds in the school’s grounds. All 200 students now have access to binoculars, which they are able to use during their weekly Sustainability classes.

Nesting boxes were also placed in trees around the grounds, with a motion sensing and pole camera set up to allow students to monitor these boxes and discover what happens around them at night.

To further educate students, parents and local families about sustainability and the importance of local biodiversity, families were also encouraged to collect bottle caps to create a beautiful Biodiversity Mural for display at the school.

Educational Outcomes

The introduction of a weekly sustainability lesson and use of binoculars have helped to deepen students’ awareness of the importance of the biodiversity all around them. By placing a motion sensor camera next to the next boxes, students have also been able to monitor night-time activity for the first time.

To extend this awareness from students to parents, the school’s Biodiversity Mural project saw families come together on a weekly basis to design and make images for the school’ Biodiversity Bottle Cap Mural. Photos of their weekly progress were put in the school’s E-Newsletter to inspire and inform the broader school community of this special project that upcycled bottle caps in the process!

Environmental Outcomes

Through the project, five new nest boxes were set up on school grounds to create habitat for local wildlife. In addition to the binoculars purchased for all students to use, it is also hoped that through the night monitoring using the school’s new camera and sensor, the school will be able to address threats to biodiversity in the local area by determining what animals are inhabiting school grounds at night as well as during the day.

Conclusion

In addition to helping get more students hands-on with monitoring local species visiting school grounds, the project also helped to deepen connections in the community – particularly through the art aspect of the project.

“Students enjoyed sorting the bottle caps into colours and designing and making things that represent our school’s biodiversity,” shared Marita Ryan, Sustainability Leader at the school. ‘It is so nice to see students and parents come together each Friday afternoon and work together to design and create our Biodiversity Mural that represents our school grounds.”

With the groundwork for the project firmly in place, the school is now looking forward to actively involving students in ongoing monitoring, recording and data collection from the motion sensor camera. As a ResourceSmart School in Victoria, the collection of data will also form a part of the requirements for the biodiversity section of this program.

“New students coming into the school will be able to learn and continue with this project for years to come. As the school’s grounds develop, we hope to see more and more native animal life,” shared the school.