Ladies' College survey of Government House

A group of girls in Year 11 at Ladies' College, under the tutelage of Dr Marshall, have been looking at the Biodiversity at Government House throughout this last year and, having done an assessment of where we are so far, they have come up with some recommendations for how to improve in the areas of pollinators, native species, trees, birds and hedgehog habitats. 

The girls created some fabulous posters and took them to the UK where they attended the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS) Student Conference and shared their findings with other young people. 

They then came to Government House and gave us a talk about what they had found and what we should do next. They discovered that we needed to provide some bird boxes with smaller holes as many of the varieties of birds seen here were quite small, like wrens and blue tits. They also made the Lieutenant-Governor very happy with his new piece of knowledge that hedgehogs are so-called because they like to live in hedges. 

We should increase our pollinator patches to an extra area as more is genuinely better when it comes to encouraging pollinators and they would like to return with some children next year and do a bug survey on the pollinator patches.

Much to work with and we shall continue to do so.