Know a young person with a great idea to benefit animals, people and our environment? Roots & Shoots’ annual Mini Grants program is open now, where members can win upto $500 towards their change-making project. Roots & Shoots Manager, Abbie Mitchell, writes about 2019’s winner, Annagrove Public School, to show how a mini grant could turn your dream into reality. 

Feeding the fussy: Annangrove Public School provided food trees for glossy black cockatoos

Some animals are generalists: they eat all sorts of different foods. Other animals are fussy. They are specialists, and only eat a select type of food. The Glossy Black Cockatoo is a very fussy seed-eating specialist. They only eat the seeds from sheoaks (Allocasurina and Casurina species). Occasionally they eat the odd tree-boring grub as well, but, on the whole, they have a fastidiously fussy diet. 

Recognising this, Annangrove Public School used their 2019 $250 Mini Grant to plant a grove of sheoaks for the locally endangered population of Glossy Black Cockatoos.

Annangrove is a rural suburb north west of Sydney. Though it is fringed by bushy areas, much of the region has become fragmented as it is cleared for hobby farms and other infrastructure. Despite the critical food this tree provides, the importance of retaining this tree species is little known, and especially, it is greatly undervalued for its aesthetic qualities – not to mention the fantastic sound it makes in the wind!

This is where Annangrove Public School stepped in. Armed with gloves, buckets and seedlings, over 100 students and willing adult helpers, got digging to plant a food source for the future. 

A hands-on project like this is a fantastic and memorable way to extend on classroom biodiversity lessons, while also making a huge improvement to your local area. It certainly looks as though Annangrove Public School enjoyed this lesson!

No matter where you live, there is bound to be a worthwhile project that you can get stuck into that will help your local environment. Right now R&S are offering mini grants to individuals, groups or schools to boost projects that benefit animals, people or our shared environment. What sorts of projects are we looking for? If it makes for a better planet we’re keen! 

So start planning a project, submit your application here, and plan to make a difference.

Hurry: Entries close 15 July! Find out more and enter at rootsandshoots.org.au/minigrants