Bush Rangers Western Australia

The Bush Ranger WA Program is a voluntary program for young Western Australians. It is part of a broader program known as Cadets WA , which aims to give all secondary-school-aged children the opportunity to participate in personal development training that provides practical life skills, develops leadership, teamwork and initiative skills, and fosters qualities of community responsibility and service.

The Bush Rangers program has been in operation at Mercy College since 2006. We have a unit of 40 cadets who meet every Monday afternoon to undertake Bush Ranger activities. These activities include:

Conservation work

Caring for the environment and thinking of many different ways to contribute as a community to help save the environment is one of the main focuses of Bush Rangers WA.

So far the Bush Rangers have contributed to the following conservation activities:

•  Picking up litter
•  Revegetating bush land and coastal foreshores
•  Redefining National Park pathways and walkways
•  Saving animals through the Western Shield Back from the Brink program

 School Projects

 Bushrangers WA have been doing school projects since the program began at Mercy College .

The projects include:

•  Building and looking after the Worm Farm
•  Setting up and maintaining a recycling and reusing service- e.g. organic waste, paper, aluminium, glass.

Future projects include:

•  Building a wetland
•  Building a native garden
•  Building a nursery using the green house to germinate our own seedlings and grow our own plants.

EDUCATION

Education in Bushrangers WA is very thorough and useful.

We have learned:

•  who the Department of Conservation is and what their role in WA is
•  how to identify native plants and animals
•  bush camping codes of conduct
•  bush survival skills
•  compass navigation
•  basic first aid
•  about Australia 's Wow factor and the need for sustainability
•  and much more

It's fun and in just the first two sessions you learn heaps of stuff about the environment.

EXCURSIONS

On our Monday afternoon meetings we also go off site. Here are some of our excursions:

•  Visiting the Fauna Rehabilitation Centre in Malaga where we look at the animals that have been hurt or injured and we see what it takes to get them better.
•  A bus tour, to view water catchment areas.
•  Bibbulmun track hike to walk the first 16km from Kalamunda to Mundaring Weir

CAMPS

We are given an opportunity to go on camps as a reward for our conservation work and commitment to Bushrangers WA. We went on camps to many places such as The Perth Hills National Parks Centre, Dwellingup and Margaret River . On these camps we carry out conservation work, team building activities and developed our understandings of the natural environment.

The activities we did on camp include:

•  navigation skills
•  bush survival skills
•  animal encounters
•  animal ecology
•  bush walks
•  conversation work
•  night activities
•  abseiling
•  rock climbing
•  flying fox
•  canoeing
•  caving
•  team building activities

These Bush Ranger camps help us to make new friends, work as a team, learn about the environment, animals and plants and finally to have lots of fun.