Opoho School visit to Okia
A hardy group of students from Opoho Primary School joined Ranger Leith Thomson and Yellow-eyed Penguin Trust Nursery staff Toby Bulow and Anita Pillai on Friday 19th August at Okia to help plant pikao in the native dune systems that we have been developing. Despite the snow earlier in the week and the lingering southerly, around 11 pupils, parents and teacher Lucy Marr were still keen to come out and learn about native dune systems. They successfully planted 200 pikao plants in a very short time.
The group from the school, the Fantails Club, is dedicated to doing things to help the environment and is supported by the Enviroschools programme. They have offered to assist us with growing pikao in their school shade house that we can use on our reserves. We will visit the school later this year to teach them how we propagate pikao and how to look after it.
The pupils clearly enjoyed visiting the reserve but the native sand sedge pikao may have been rated second best on the day next to the exciting 4WD trip to and from the planting site.
Thank you Opoho School for your help and we look forward to seeing you sometime in September.
