Sustainability News

In Sustainability this term we have been working towards earning a Biodiversity Star for our school. As a part of this goal, we want to become a Fighting Extinction School in conjunction with Zoos Victoria. A Fighting Extinction School works to engage students and teachers in real world learning by taking action for wildlife. There is a special project we need to complete, and to succeed in this we wanted to focus our efforts on one specific endangered animal. The school community helped us deicide which animal by completing a survey online.  The votes are in and we will be joining the fight to help the Mountain Pygmy Possum. 

The Mountain Pygmy Possum was thought to already be extinct until in the 1960’s where they were rediscovered on Mt Hotham. There are less than 2,000 Mountain Pygmy Possums left in the wild today.  Mountain Pygmy Possums are endangered because of habitat loss, climate change and predators (mainly feral cats and foxes). There are only three populations of the Mountain Pygmy Possum. They reside in the Bogong High Plains, Mt Buller in Victoria and Mt Kosciuzko in New South Wales.

The major threats

Climate change, the loss of habitat and predators, mainly feral cats and foxes, are all severe threats to the Mountain Pygmy Possum.   An emerging threat is the reduction in the possum's key food source over spring, the Bogong Moth. This is currently a particular focus within the Mountain Pygmy-possum Recovery Team. 

WASTE WISE EASTER

Is the Easter bunny planning to visit you?  Or has a block of chocolate come home with you from the supermarket?  Here’s how to ensure your aluminium foil is recycled.

Remove any solid food from your foil. A bit of melted chocolate can be left on the foil. It will be removed in the recycling process. 

Scrunch your foil into a ball.  You want the ball to be about the size of a tennis ball.  

Hint: If you have small pieces of foil from Easter eggs, keep adding to the ball until you reach this size.   

Toss the ball of foil into your recycling bin  

Once the foil reaches the recycling site, it is sorted from the other materials and bundled together, then gets shredded, heated and rolled into new aluminium sheets that are used again to make aluminium packaging. 

Anastasia L. (Year 8)