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Children’s Bush Camp Programme
Community Conservation Education Complex
Children’s Bush Camp Programme
Programme Overview
In the endeavour to reduce snare-related mortality in Hwange’s painted dog, community conservation education is a key element. Toward this aim, Painted Dog Conservation has created a purpose-built facility, Iganyana Bush Camp, to teach local children about nature conservation. Iganyana Bush Camp was built by local labour and completed in April, 2004.
The programme is free-of-charge for all grade students in primary schools from communities that border the Hwange painted dog population. In its first year, 15 local schools were selected to participate in a three-day experience. It is hoped that increased funding will allow the free-of-charge programme to expand each year, both in terms of number of participating schools and length of stay.
Non-local schools are invited to participate in the bush camp programme as "donor schools" which not only pay for the cost of their own camp, but also sponsor a local school. This is one way the programme plans to become self-supporting.
Iganyana Bush Camp can house up to forty-five students. Student are grouped into "packs" of fifteen students or less and assigned to a specially trained bush camp guide who leads them through a set series of activities. Packs rotate through the activities so that only one pack is using a resource at once.
Activities include:
- Teak Woodlands Studies
: Through a series of scavenger hunts in the safety of the camp’s Environmental Education Exclosure, students learn about ecological relationships and adaptations for survival in one of the ecosystem’s most interesting natural communities.
"Meet the Dogs": Students hike a raised walkway through the 600-metre diameter Painted Dog Enclosure to search for painted dogs. In the Painted Dog Rehabilitation Facility, students meet orphaned painted dogs and learn about their natural history and the threats to their survival.
"Game Drive": Students learn about wildlife adaptations for survival, through this game drive in Hwange National Park.
"Tree Search": Students use botanical terms and concepts to find and identify native trees by their characteristics, viewed as adaptations to their habitat and niche.
"Campfire": Students sing traditional songs and participate in a conservation play around a bonfire.
Video Night: Students watch and discuss "Hunters in Twilight" to learn about the research and intervention procedures used by Painted Dog Conservation project to try to save Hwange’s painted dog population from extirpation.
The bush camp curriculum focuses on the following educational themes:
- Careful observation using all five senses, scientific skills, methods and inventiveness are useful in understanding the environment and solving environmental problems.
- Ecological relationships affect all creatures. Humans are an inseparable part of the web of life and completely dependent on it.
- Each species plays an important role (its niche) in the natural community to which it belongs (its habitat).
- Each species is adapted to successfully exploit its niche.
- Painted hunting dogs and other endangered species usually become threatened due to habitat destruction or unsustainable utilization by people.
- Biodiversity has value to stable ecosystems and human economy.
- Extinction has far reaching effects on ecosystems.
Sustainable populations of each species have a right to exist in healthy habitat. People are obliged to protect endangered species and natural communities, not only for future human survival, but also as intelligent stewards of the biosphere.
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