Tuesday 12 December 2023
GDC Biosecurity officer, Glenn Brown is passionate about New Zealand’s unique flora and fauna. One of the most enjoyable aspects of his role is bringing awareness of the threats faced by our native species to the next generation- who are the future kaitiaki of our environment.
Drawing on his experience as a former schoolteacher, Glenn has developed an engaging and informative presentation that he has been delivering to school children across the district, highlighting the many challenges facing our indigenous biodiversity.
At the start of the presentation, children are encouraged to answer questions that help Glenn to establish the existing level of knowledge within each school group. Questions such as “What is biosecurity?” and “What makes a pest a pest?” often draw out an interesting range of responses. The children are encouraged to name pest species that they know and identify indigenous creatures from pictures that pop up on screen. Glenn has noticed a significant difference in basic knowledge between the rural and urban schools he has visited.
The presentation is packed with interesting facts such as the life expectancy of a kiwi (50-60 years) and the fact that each female can lay around 100 eggs in her lifetime, but due to predation (primarily from stoats) only around 10 of these will hatch. Of the 10 that hatch, the chicks remain vulnerable to predators, and it is likely that only 5 chicks will make it to adulthood. The perception of our national bird as a docile, defenseless creature is then busted as Glenn shows the children video footage of an adult male kiwi fiercely defending its nest from a possum… with the possum coming out second best.
Another popular feature of the presentation is an interactive trap demo where Glenn shows the children different types of traps used for pest control and demonstrates how they are set and triggered (from a safe distance).
With the realisation that the future of our threatened plants and animals will one day lie with them, the children are introduced to some of the up-and-coming technology that may one day be widely available in the biosecurity space- self resetting traps, weed spraying drones and infra-red species-specific targeted pest control are some of the tools under development.
The initial rollout of this programme has been targeting primary aged tamariki (Years 1-8), but Glenn is currently developing some new content that he will pitch at secondary schools in 2024.
If you would like to know more or want to arrange for Glenn to visit your child’s school or kura, then please get in touch glenn.brown@gdc.govt.nz
