Clare is the Community Engagement Officer with Parks and Wildlife based in Katherine. Part of her role involves working with kids in the Junior Ranger program. The program delivers hands-on activities based in environmental education for between 10-30 kids at a time, including activities such as hiking, tracking, navigation, spotlighting and birdwatching.
Her groups don’t do any formal collecting activities, but Clare enters some of the images of things they find during their activities in and around the Nitmiluk National Park. She said that the kids are getting better at being careful with the animals they find and they’re especially keen on frogs, bugs and geckos.
As well as contributing the sightings to the ALA database, she uses the species information, images and species distribution maps to assist in identifying the specimens.
Ranger Clare also presents talks to schools and community members and contributes articles to websites and newspapers. The ALA is one of the resources she uses to check facts while preparing these.
She was initially reluctant to contribute to the ALA as she didn’t think her data was “good enough”. With her wealth of knowledge and photography skills, we are glad that she started adding her sightings to share with others through the ALA.
Please contact us if you would like to share how you use the ALA.