Educational Fun in a Living Classroom
Habitat Survival Trust seeks to raise awareness, especially in children, that by caring for the environment at home a world of difference can be made. Past and recent projects include transforming dense coppice into a nature trail at a local primary school, planting 2000 indigenous trees at our Centre near Henley-in-Arden and completing a purpose-built classroom with toilet facilities and wheelchair access. The building is located in 12 acres of woodland and grassland, has direct access to the tributary river Alne, nature trails for walking and a flourishing wildlife pond.
Our site offers opportunities for habitat conservation awareness, pond dipping, river studies, woodland specification and classification of species, most of which are directed towards KS1 and KS2 pupils. Our modern classroom is equipped with the latest audio visual technology where children can benefit from individual discovery as well as group and fieldwork studies in a safe and natural environment. It is important to add that visits can be tailored to the specific requirements of teachers to complement and extend National Curriculum topic work in Geography, Science and Citizenship, plus personal, social and health education.
Flora and fauna are disappearing from Britain's countryside at such an alarming rate that scientists fear for the future. A major census of native birds, butterflies and plants has shown that numbers have plunged by up to 71% in the last few decades; this is the strongest evidence yet of man's encroachment on natural habitat and the devastating effects of intensive farming. The destruction of ancient woodland, loss of grassland and wetland, pollution from transport and industry, house-building, use of fertilizers and herbicides and the concomitant warming climate are all to blame, upsetting a natural balance established over hundreds of millennia.
We provide workshops to cover all aspects of habitat and dependant wildlife and always do our best to be sensitive in approach, because a youngster's window on the natural world is often an untidy patch of wilderness where a host of incredible life-forms survive and flourish. For a curious child encouraged to go with, rather than against nature, a wealth of wonder exists in a small pile of logs, an upturned plant pot and a sprinkle of wild flowers because life for a child is a journey of wonder and discovery.
Only after the last tree has been felled, only after the last river has been poisoned, only after the last fish has been caught, only then will you find that money cannot be eaten. [Cree Indian prophecy]