Siren is using the power of football to help the painted dogs in Zimbabwe! Siren’s partner in our Darwin Initiative project - Painted Dog Conservation - sponsor the Iganyana Area Soccer league Dete. The football teams inspire support from the very people who set the illegal hunting snares that kill the dogs and the sponsorship has created a lot of good will towards the conservation project, and thus the dogs themselves.

Thanks to a generous donation from a supporter, Siren was able to give full kit and footballs to each of the 12 teams, each named after local wildlife. Thanks also to Pendle Sportswear who assisted with shipping logistics and printed the shirts with names such as Hotspurs Leopards, Manchester Cheetahs, and Mapale Bushbucks. Further football related donations would be most welcome, as the league wears the kits out every couple of years!

Bushmeat - meat from wild animals - is a regular source of food and livelihood for many of the 155 million people who live on less than a dollar a day in west and central Africa (DFID's Wildlife and Poverty study, 2002). In recent years, bushmeat hunting has increased as roads built for the log trade have allowed hunters with improved technology (guns and wire snares) to penetrate ever deeper into the forest, whilst urbanisation has led to increased markets for bushmeat in towns and cities. Scientists believe that current rates of exploitation in the Congo Basin (estimated at 28 million bay duiker antelopes and 7 million red colobus monkeys each year) are far in excess of what wildlife populations can support, particularly as the forests themselves are threatened by unsustainable logging and conversion to agriculture.

With funds from the Department for International Development, Siren is investigating this emotive and challenging topic with A-Level and GCSE students in 5 Thames Valley Schools. The project includes ethical, ecological and economic enquiries into the bushmeat crisis and uses interactive learning methods such as role play and debate. A parallel project in Cameroon is being funded by the International Centre for Conservation Education, culminating in a linked conference in March 2011.

Nancy shared Naturebook art activities with 600 schoolchildren and teachers and 900 members of the public at the Oxford Outdoor Learning Festival at Hill End on September 24th and 25th. Watch this space for artwork uploads.

Sasha led wildflower art sessions at The Garden Festival organised by the Steiner School Academy at Hellens Manor in Herefordshire.

Children's art from the festival can be viewed here. Grown-ups from the festival also had a go - their collaborative wildflower painting can be viewed here.

Here's an audio clip of Sasha being interviewed on BBC Oxford.

Thanks to Langdale Village Community School and teacher Andrea Flear for Siren's new Naturebook signs. After a stone age shopping trip round the school's hedgerows, we created these 'forage collages' and used photoshop and a lot of string to produce two banners. Click here to view more recent artwork by Andrea's class, inspired by Andy Goldsworthy.

Nancy joined children from East Oxford Primary School on their weekly Forest School session at Hinkey Heights Nature Park to create our very first Naturebook on woodland shapes and colours. We gave a real bound copy to the school library and uploaded their very original work to Naturebook here.

Siren is about to launch its new online project -

.....poetry, sketches, oils, watercolours, pencil lines, nature notes, photographs, plants, animals, fungi, or microscopic bugs, ugliness, beauty, fascination, or disgust, cartoons, expressionism, realism, magic, expressions of love, hopelessness, joy, anything at all, as long as you were inspired by something alive...

NatureBook aims to be an entirely open-ended, non-prescriptive, one stop shop for your thoughts, interpreted through words and art, on conservation, wildlife, wild places, calm oases, the influence of such places on how we feel and interact, the links between nature and art, nature and physical and mental health, nature and human intervention and, and, you fill in the gaps....

Join at naturebook.org

Sasha Norris, Siren's founder, is part of the "Wild Thing - I Love You" team. "Wild Thing - I Love You" is Channel 4's new wildlife series. Each week, comedian Bill Bailey leads a team of experts as they attempt to solve an urgent wildlife crisis. Catch her on C4 on Sundays from October 15th!

The adults are messing up the planet — now it’s time for the kids to take charge! Dr. Sasha Norris’ new book Super Kids is a manual for young eco-heroes with all the facts, ideas and knowledge they’ll need to save the planet. For more details visit www.greenbooks.co.uk

Siren's Talking Tree Trail up at Hinksey Heights Nature Park in Oxford is having a makeover, with new signs to replace those that have been gnawed by wildlife or weather. View the trail virtually on Naturebook. For some fresh air near Oxford, the 'real' trail can be reached from Cumnor by walking along Hurst Lane, turning left halfway towards Chilswell Farm down Harcourt Hill bridleway. Alternatively, drive to the South Hinksey and Golf Course turn off the A34, drive up towards the golf course and park at the Nature Trail car park.

Siren’s latest creative educational production – the Angling Spring Wood Talking Trail - is now available for download from www.anglingspringwood.org.uk If you are planning a visit to the Chilterns, please take a look!

To set the scene… The trees of Angling Spring Wood are eagerly awaiting their visit by the Green Man, guardian spirit of vegetation. When he’s about the woods seem more alive.

Armed with audio tracks and a map, the listener wanders through the woods, with carved posts indicating interesting places to stop and listen. As you travel deeper into the woods, you will find some very talkative trees. Even the Spring of Angling Spring Wood has something to say.

The new woodland trail, close to Prestwood and Great Missenden, aims to stir the imagination, and is a novel way for family outings and schools to experience and learn about woodlands. Eleven skilled actors and actresses contributed their voices to the project. Familiar voices include film actor Toby Jones, the voice of Dobby the House Elf in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Toby’s father, Freddie Jones, a character actor with an illustrious career in film, theatre and TV, (currently to be seen on the small screen as Sandy Jones in Emmerdale) plays the Oak. Poet Oliver Bernard took the part of the Green Man.

Siren produced the Angling Spring Wood audio trail with project partners Chiltern District Council, Prestwood Nature, the Chiltern Woodland Project, and the Forestry and Woodlands Partnership. The trail was also funded by SEEDA and the Chilterns Conservation Board.
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Ever wonder what trees are thinking? At Hinksey Heights Nature Park in Oxford, eight trees now speak their minds on illustrated signs, proudly presenting the poetry they have inspired and telling their own tales about local ecology and traditional culture. The trail, developed with a grant from Living Spaces, was launched on 3rd July with an activity day for local families, including pond-dipping with Oxford University entomologist Darren Mann and marshmallow toasting with the Outdoor Learning Programme team. Read more

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OUT NOW: PACE Virtual Explorer for UK Schools

With Siren Conservation Education, Tusk's partner in the PACE project initiative, and additional funding from the Vodafone Foundation, Tusk has just published a PACE pack aimed at schools in the UK. These electronic resources, designed to support the national curriculum in secondary Science and Geography, lets students fly (via Google Earth!) to the location of each PACE film. Each film forms the basis of a lesson with learning activities, developed by teachers, including plenty of interactive group activities, debates and role plays to bring each topic to life and draw out the global connections and themes. Students can also explore the diversity of Africa through selected Internet links and webcams.

Both resources include a number of case studies from Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia.

Proceeds from the sale of the resources will contribute to the PACE project in Africa. More details and order forms can be found on the Pace Virtual Explorer website.

Siren is pleased to announce that it will be building on its work with UK schools developed through PACE with a grant from the Department for International Development to run school workshops on wildlife conservation and sustainable development in West Africa.

"Interesting, different and thought provoking" Pupil at the Warriner School, Bloxham

"Unique and positive case studies" RISC Development Education

Tusk Trust is funding a PACE Training and Demonstration Project at Ggaba Primary Teacher Training College in Kampala, Uganda is helping new teachers gain useful knowledge and practical experience with techniques for sustainable development to carry out to schools and communities throughout their careers. Projects on the college grounds are set to include ecological sanitation, rainwater harvesting, composting organic waste, food production and fuel-efficient stoves.

With assistance from a variety of sources, including the Roots and Shoots Programme in Madagascar, the French version of the PACE pack is well underway. Can you help translate or field test the materials?

Further funds are sought urgently to enable us to print and distribute the pack throughout Francophone Africa.

For an update on how the PACE project materials are being used in Cameroon, please click here

The Pan African Conservation Education Resource Pack is now ready for distribution to schools, NGOs and education centres in Africa. From fuel-saving stoves to rainwater-harvesting, compost making to forest product certification, the pack shares information about the environment and the very practical ways in which people are addressing common environmental problems.

The PACE pack contains:

· Films featuring inspirational projects from around the continent where people have found simple and cost effective ways to solve environmental problems

· A children’s book and poster about local and global environmental issues, including learning activities for groups and individuals

· A series of Action Sheets explaining the techniques featured, along with a directory of useful contacts to help people put the ideas featured in the films into practice

If you represent an educational organisation in Africa that would be interested in receiving these materials, please contact us!

The Vodafone Group Foundation is to fund PACE - Siren’s new collaboration with Tusk Trust. Featuring inspiring people and projects across Africa, PACE, the Pan African Conservation Education project, will use visual media and the written word to promote tried and tested solutions to environmental problems. Read more