School kids protect the Town Belt
By Maureen Howard, Senior Educator Coordinator for Town Belt Kaitiaki
Town Belt Kaitiaki (TBK) is a for-schools’ student led programme whose purpose is to ‘promote and better the Dunedin Town Belt’. From activities ranging from planting trees to creating podcasts - getting rid of invasive pests in the Town Belt is again a big part of our mahi!
TBK has a Student Leadership Team (SLT) of about 30 students made up of representatives from 12 schools with students ranging from Year 5 to 13 (~age 9 to ~17). Each month the students meet at their Role Model Site in Scarba Reserve that is part of the Town Belt to lead hands-on activities such as iNaturalist, tree planting and weeding. This is followed by indoor planning.
Taking on Scarba Reserve’s trapline this year was spearheaded by the SLT’s co-chair Finn Hibbert. To include the large team of 24 students who wanted to trap this term, Finn created a Roster and helped organise the students and their training.
Each week on our trapline check, an experienced senior student will support younger students to check the traps, while one to two trained adult volunteers supervise in the background. It’s a fantastic teaching and learning experience for experienced seniors and budding trappers.
Many thanks to all the people that have made this happen! We’re grateful to the amazing staff at City Sanctuary, Finn Hibbert’s drive and organisation, our hard-working dedicated team of supervising volunteers led by Katy Rossiter, the enthusiasm of the students in the TBK Trap Team, and the guidance of our community-based Strategic Leadership Team.