Community & Education

This has implications for nature conservation. How can we expect people to sacrifice time or money to save the bush if they rarely experience it?

From its early days more than 25 years ago, the Nature Foundation saw that education and hands-on engagement with nature were essential if conservation programs were to attract public attention – and funds.

So we’ve been behind all kinds of community education, including:

• Regular funding appeals which highlight aspects of biodiversity and landscape research and their importance
• Funding interpretive signage in parks – including geological information for the comparatively new Gawler Ranges National Park
• Taking to local primary schools the amazing story of the Pygmy Blue Tongued Lizard – thought to be extinct then rediscovered near Burra in the stomach of a snake
• Supporting the production of educational information for projects including the Southern Brown Bandicoot and wide-ranging community biodiversity initiative, Ark on Eyre
• Funding publications such as A Biological Survey of the Stony Deserts, the Coongie Lakes Study
• Sponsoring environmental awards in the Oliphant Science Awards Scheme for school students
• Promoting the importance of maintaining and enhancing significant native bush on private land
• Funding tertiary scholarships for students undertaking research on nature conservation issues