TUESDAY saw students from Menindee Central School’s Junior Rangers met with staff from water authorities to undertake a citizen science experiment.
The Junior Rangers worked with Murray Darling Basin Authority’s regional engagement officer Richard Unsworth and Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder’s local engagement officer Tim Field at Menindee and took water samples from the Darling Baaka.
The samples being collected are part of a broader project supported by the Odonata Foundation called the Great Australian Wildlife Search and Mr Unsworth said water was taken in some 190 locations through the Basin which helped to establish a database of information on the fauna living within the river system.
“It doesn’t just pick up fish, it picks up everything from bacteria right through to birds, turtles, mammals,” he said.
“It doesn’t give you numbers or anything, but it gives you a snapshot of the animals that have been present at that location, and you’re sampling the water in a really passive way.”
Initial sampling took place in 2023 and this year Mr Unsworth enlisted the help of local school children who are a part of the ‘Junior Rangers’ program, Barkandji Rangers, and Mr Field.
Menindee Central School’s senior leader of community engagement Daniel Fusi said the Junior Rangers program was established to encourage kids to look into becoming a local ranger and is a collaboration between the school and the Aboriginal Land Council.
“We do things like camps, taking them to sacred sites,” he said.
“It’s been really interesting because some of the kids who were a bit reluctant in the classroom have really come to the table during these excursions.”
Mr Unsworth said he had always intended to involve local school students in the project.
“My goal was to get kids involved because my observation has been that the younger you get kids involved in this stuff, it can really point them in that direction later in life,” he said.
With the results were mostly expected to be much the same as last year, Mr Unsworth said there’s been a few occasional bizarre finds already.
“Sometimes you get off results where someone forgot to wash their hands and you’ll find a tuna or a salmon in the water, but it’s actually just picked up the DNA from what they ate for lunch,” he said.
