Bush School Update:

On Wednesday, an Ecologist (Julian) and Auckland Council's Conservation Educationalist (Frazer) visited the bush school to help answer some burning questions and guide us on our project journey. We took them on a little tiki tour of our ngahere and pointed out any areas of concern before sitting down to problem-solve. 

Ultimately, there were four main themes that came up for the group: 

• A keen interest in our resident Magpies. Please note that no Magpies will be harmed at any stage of the project, but this was a really interesting conversation around 'pests'. 
•  Creating a path of some description in the protected zone; this will be our next design mission. 
• Creating our Wētā sanctuary. We understand that we need more information.
• Information on soil health. Western Heights is built on clay soil, and this has been super interesting to navigate when selecting trees and plants.

After quite a bit of discussion, we agreed that the path, Wētā, and soil health can be addressed as the number one issue. Meanwhile, the Magpies remain a bit more of an unknown. We would need constant monitoring of traps, etc and participation from the local community for an unknown and extended period of time. We agreed that our efforts were best directed toward the things that we can control and can work on together at school. Magpies are still at the top of the kids' interest list for the kids, so we will do a Magpie sidequest later on in the year when time allows.

The next step is to add some much-needed mulch to spread over the ground, start enrichment planting on both sides, and design pathways for the protected side of the bush.