Waimarama Sanctuary

Hi everybody next week Inquiry groups 1 and 2 are going to the Waimarama Sanctuary. We've been doing lots of research and we found out that there are over 250 species of recorded plants and the trust has over 600 members. Some species that are there are the NZ falcon, yellow crown parakeets, wekas and robins. Their goal is to build a pest proof fence to keep invasive species out. The fence will cost 4 million, it will be made of stainless steel and will be 14km long. The holes in the fence can be no bigger than the width of a pencil and it must be dug deep so no pests can tunnel under. They have already raised 1.8 million.
Some of the pests are stoats, weasels, cats, mice, rats, possums, goats, pigs and deer. We are looking forward to learning lots more on our visit next week. Check back for an update and photos!

FPS:Depletion of Oceanic Species

Depletion of Oceanic Species
Stepping stone challenge
FPS have just started a stepping stone challenge. A stepping stone challenge is a non-competitive but marked assessment challenge. We have a scenario in which we research, think,and discuss. Then we find problems and solutions about our scenario. This time our scenario is about the Depletion of Oceanic species. We all had a lot to say about our topic and had a BIG discussion about our thoughts, opinions and any facts that we knew. After talking we went on a website called GreenPeace and searched the website for useful, helpful or any interesting information. These are some things that we found out. Only about 2% of known marine life live in the deep oceans. Most of the other 98% live in the shallow seas. 5-7% of people can help make a difference. Two thirds of the earth is ocean, 80% of living species live in the ocean. Next we shared our thoughts and facts about what we found out and how we feel now. We learn't about bottom trawling, overfishing and by- catch. Also that it is not that they are fishing, but how they are fishing. Also commercial fishing methods are the ones that are damaging the marine life and the recreational fisherman are not doing as much harm. Many of us have decided to try and join GreenPeace and we are taking this very seriously. Mrs CraneField showed us a clip about bottom trawling, and everyone had mixed emotions we were sad, angry and majorly wanted to do something to help. We are thinking of ways to make people aware of the dangers our oceans are in, these include education sessions, blogs, posters, and more. Frayja says " we are all much more aware of how badly our oceans need us and how badly we need to help, after all it was human beings that got oceans into this mess, and we are determined to get the oceans out of it". Freya says that " she badly want's to join GreenPeace and help make a difference!". Ben's mum is coming to speak to us and will be a very helpful resource as she was once on the whale wars boat. FPS is a group of 12 people trying to make a difference! Individuals with passion and energy to get involved is what is needed!!!

By Frayja and Mitchell

Term 2 Update

Welome to reach's blog
Last term we read a scenario on a boy called Robert. He lived in 2040 and there was something called synthetic nutrition (SN) that made you healthy and allows you to live for another 150 more years. But he had to take only the synthetic nutrition for the rest of his life instead of food. We had to think of problems this would cause and then choose the top ten. We then had to select one underlining problem, which was: that if most people chose to take SN this could result in a decrease in natural food as well a problem of over population. If he chose to eat a healthier diet he could also live longer. We were all pleased to get our first booklet off in the post and celebrated with popcorn!!
This term, we have another scenario about the depletion of ocean species. We have begun to research it, here are a few facts about it so far. Bottom trawlers ( big boats with nets behind them that run along the bottom of the sea floor and trap coral and fish) destroy coral reefs, and each year they destroy 150 times the size of deforestation( forests being chopped down to nothing) . We have seen some videos and we really want to do something to help our ocean species that are overfished.

Please help us to stop over fishing and depletion of oceanic species.
Watch this space and each week we will try to add a way that you can help this problem.

You can help by - Eating less fish and if you must eat fish - find out if it is sustainable, this means it stock is not at risk.
Bluefin tuna is one fish we should not eat if we want them to remain in our oceans as they so overfished.

by Ben and Samantha from F.P.S.