Spa Park Student Leadership Team Project
Student Leadership Team Annual Planting
The Student Leadership Team started up in 2015. It has evolved over time. You can read more about this here. The students began regularly helping out at the Greening Taupō Community Planting Events and the idea of having their own student-led community planting was soon conceived by the group. This was organised through collaboration with Taupō District Council and the first of these plantings took place in August 2017 at Spa Park. The student leadership team has organised and run a restoration planting event at Spa Park every year since. They organise the registration area, parking, activities, food, advertising etc. Taupō District Council generously supports this planting event and funds the trees and preparation work. The site now stretches down from the carpark, along a mountain bike track, and this year will follow the river. It was extended outwards to the playground in 2021. An area which was once grass and weeds is becoming a native forest. Check out the photos below. Can you see the blue bike on the pole in both photos? This gives you an idea of the location.
The Spa Park original planting in 2017 (left) and the same site being shown to the 2022 junior team by the chairperson of the 2022 Senior Leadership Team, Stevie Manunui.
Kiwi Guardian Adventure Map
In 2017, the student leadership team also worked in collaboration with the Department of Conservation to design a Kiwi Guardian adventure map for Spa Park. You can follow the map to find the pole with a code word on it. Enter the code word in the Kiwi Guardian website to receive a free medal.
The 2017 Student Leadership Team planning the Spa Park DOC Kiwi Guardian Adventure Map
Predator Control by the Predator Free Kids
In 2022 the first Predator Free Kids team was started up, run by Kids Greening Taupō and Predator Free Taupō. This team met at Spa Park for the first term. They set tracking tunnels and monitored the pests in the park.
Then they built traps and set a trapline through the student leadership restoration site. They had local expert Jason Day come and show them how to make lures and give them advice on how to place the traps. Then a roster was set up so that the students could check the traps weekly. They have caught lots of rats!
Weeding and a Bug Hotel
At a weeding session in preparation for our annual student leadership team planting day at Spa Park in 2021, the students found an area of logs that were piled up and left to rot. This led to an interesting discussion. Some students said that we needed to ask the council to remove the logs as they looked messy and made our site look bad. Others then said, no they are an important habitat for our invertebrates, such as spiders, native cockroaches, millipedes, centipedes, peripatus, and grubs. They explained that they are also good for our native lizards and fungi. Many of these students had been to workshops with Ruud Kleinpaste (AKA The Bugman). He had taught them about the huge number of awesome native bugs that live in decomposing wood. In fact, he had told them that the best bug hotel is a big rotten log!
Our coordinator Rachel, said that Taupō District Council (TDC) had actually told her that the logs were left there to provide a habitat for invertebrates. We thought that was awesome! But, the students then decided that if that was the case, there needed to be a sign put there to inform the public, so that they understood this and didn’t just think the site was messy. Patrick volunteered to write to TDC and ask permission to put a ‘Bug Hotel’ sign at the site. TDC agreed and the students were set the challenge of designing a sign.
Hana’s submission was chosen as having the best design. She had designed it using the online programme, Canva. It had a beautiful border of bugs and a background of wood. Lizzie had really good information on her design. So, Lizzie, Hana and Patrick got together and combined ideas to come up with the final design. They found that they couldn’t include everything that they wanted to tell people on one small sign, so they decided to add a QR code that could be scanned to take people to the Kids Greening Taupō Bug Hunting webpage. On this page people can watch videos of Ruud Kleinpaste talking about bug hunting, find ways to identify their bug, learn how to make pitfall traps, learn how to make their own bug hotel, and find bug hunting scavenger hunt resources.
The final design was put together and sent out to the students to be approved. Patrick wrote back saying that he thought we should also add te reo Māori, so the title ‘Whare Ngāngara’ was added. Our Kids Greening Taupō kairuruku reo Māori (Māori speaking coordinator), Tākoha Pitiroi, created bug hunting resources in te reo Māori to add to the webpage too.
Our awesome supporter Shawn Vennell, at Quality Print, printed the sign onto metal backing and it was ready to be installed. He even gave some free signs to the students involved to use at their schools for bug hotels. We also presented one to our friend Ruud Kleinpaste to show the schools that he works with all over New Zealand. Hopefully, we can inspire other students to make official ‘Bug Hotels’ too.
At the first Student Leadership Team meetings for 2022 opening ceremonies for the bug hotel were held, and the sign was uncovered with a flourish by those involved in making it.
You can check out the official ‘Bug Hotel-Whare Ngārara’ at Spa Park and go for a bug hunt in the logs. It is just a short distance down the mountain bike track that goes from the main carpark. You will also be able to see 6 years worth of native plantings done by the Kids Greening Taupō student leadership teams. You might spot lots of bugs checking out the plants too, especially the flowering koromiko. It is loved by our native flies, bees and butterflies. I wonder what bugs you will find?
The 2022 Nature Explorers team checking out the bug hotel and following the Kiwi Guardian Map at Spa Park
