Feral Thoughts

If the thylacine can be driven to extinction, why not the fox? A Feral Focus study for school students

Feral Focus is a new resource for high school teachers that features a whole range of topics that will get kids thinking.  We aren't just talking about plain old "science" either, but a range of subjects that include Life and Living;  Working Scientifically; Science and Society; Science at Work; Sustainability of Life and Wise Resource Use and many others.  Author Jo Keogh has provided links to curriculum subjects in all Australian states.  Feral animals can be the basis for a lot of discussion on a range of subjects.

There are only a small number of foxes in Tasmania; many fewer than Thylacines (Tasmanian tigers) when Europeans arrived.  What led to extinction of the Thylacine and can the same forces drive the fox to extinction?  This is just one of many study units available of Feral Focus.  The program was launched for teachers in Canberra last week and next week, we'll launch it for students at the Australian Science Festival.

 

If you are interested in some good topics for kids to get stuck into, check out Feral Focus.

Students getting more than just science

Our Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre PhD students are each undertaking 80 days of training in things like media, communications skills, intellectual property, the funding environment, working in teams and self awareness.  We call the program "Balanced Scientist" because we think that the program's graduates will be more effective because they are receiving a wider range of training opportunities. 

We don't expect them to simply squeeze the training into their research time.  We've arranged to give them extra scholarship time.  Because most of them are working with animals or natural systems, the extra time also helps if they lose a season's data or animals don't behave as planned.