Going Wild about Scotland through March

20/04/2016 in RZSS

It’s been a mad March for the Wild about Scotland team, visiting schools in Dundee, Angus, East and West Lothian, Midlothian, North and South Lanarkshire, Glasgow, Fife, and East and South Ayrshire.

Now that we are into spring we have restarted our popular Mini-beast sessions; giving pupils the opportunity to get their hands dirty and explore what’s living in their school grounds. It’s also a great opportunity for us to keep an eye on the changing seasons, seeing the first bees and butterflies emerge. As part of this session, pupils think about what improvements they would like to make to their school grounds to encourage more wildlife. We are now able to help further by giving schools their very own pack of native tree saplings, kindly donated by The Woodland Trust.

We are doing our bit to encourage local biodiversity at RZSS Edinburgh Zoo, with the unveiling of the new Wild about Scotland garden. It demonstrates a variety of small changes people can make in their own garden to help local wildlife - from feeding birds, planting wildflowers, providing refuges in the form of log piles, building a mini-beast hotel or digging a small pond.

We are also distributing our new pocket-sized ‘Biodiversity Guides’ to schools and members of the public at our events, providing tips and advice for spotting and protecting Scottish biodiversity.

Much of the work in the Wild about Scotland garden has been carried out by our newly recruited Wild about Scotland volunteers. Our fantastic team of volunteers will be helping us out at school visits and public events, interpreting the resources aboard the bus and sharing their knowledge of Scottish wildlife. It has been great to have the team of volunteers helping out at various venues across the city of Edinburgh during the last two weeks as part of the Edinburgh International Science Festival. 

By far the most rewarding part of our job is seeing how excited and interested the pupils are to learn about Scottish wildlife. So we leave you with a trio of our favourite photos from this month - the moment when three young girls came face to face with a beaver pelt for the first time during an Endangered Animals session!

See you next month
Jamie and Lindsay
Wild about Scotland Education Officers