ATREE’s Wild Kidz ‘Summer Camp - 2019’

The weekend of 10-12th May this year will forever be engraved in the minds of the 15 participants who attended the ATREE’s Wild Kidz ‘Summer Camp’ organized by the Agasthyamalai Community Conservation Centre (ACCC), Manimutharu. The three-day two-night sleepaway camp, held at Mundanthurai, Kalakad-Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR), was a wild camp for 11 to 15 age group from various government and private schools around Tirunelveli District. The objectives of the camp were to educate awareness about the environment, ecosystem services, to give them an opportunity to learn and develop skills like painting, leadership qualities, teamwork, and the specific goal is to instill conservation education among the campers in an enjoyable and meaningful way. All the camp activities were conducted by researchers of ATREE.

The campers were exposed to pre and post camp evaluation in order to measure the outcomes of the camp.

‘I design my T-shirt’ a fabric painting session, where they designed their camp T-shirt with the camp logo to develop their painting skills and appreciate the animals in the logo unique to KMTR. Visual presentations were given on ‘an introduction to the world of Butterflies’ which helped the campers to recollect the life cycle of butterflies, differentiating butterflies from moths, identifying five common families of butterflies and their species in ‘I-Identi-SPY-Butterflies’, a butterfly trail session. 

The hustle and bustle daytimes at camp were filled with lots of meaningful activities. A guided nature trail on Puckle’s to Servallar path in the sunny morning of the second day was the highlight of the camp. In which, the campers walked through the dry deciduous forest stopping frequently to see and identify various birds, insects; hear the sounds of trailing ants and termites; trace the tracks of mammals and reptiles simultaneously they got information about what they saw and hear. Sighting a herd of Gaur (Bos gaurus) with one calf, Bonnet Macaque (Macaca radiata), Crested Serpent Eagle (Spilornis cheela), River Heliodor (Libellago sp.), tadpoles, Froglets, Garden Lizards (Calotes vesicolor), dragonflies, damselflies, butterflies such as Common Emigrants (Catopsilla pomona), Lime Butterfly (Papillio demoleus), breakfast and a dip in the stream enthralled the campers. The campers had a hands-on with the tree such as Cassia, Peltophorum, Bauhinia, Ficus, and Atalantia were they learned to measure the GBH, traced the imprints of the tree barks and also observed the animal visitors for an hour and understood the role of trees in the ecosystem. The participants surveyed many animal road-kills like Toad, Termite-hill Gecko, Bark Gecko, Garden Lizard, Bugs, Ants, Cockroaches, Grasshoppers and Millipedes in the morning road-kill survey and realized the impacts of traffic inside the protected areas. The campers scanned the Tufted Grey or South Eastern Langur (Semnopithecus priam) to observe their roosting behavior, cherished and learned social values like adjustment, helping, etc. from them. In the stream dipping, the children observed aquatic organisms such as pond striders, water scorpions, diving beetles, fishes, etc. and learned their adaptations. 

The two dazzling nights were engaged with fun, games, and thrills. Moth Screens were erected on each night to facilitate the two mothing sessions, in which life cycle, feeding habits of moths were discussed. Besides four moths belonging to four families, a number of insects like Caddiesfly, Cicada, Scarab Beetles, Mosquitoes, etc. were observed on the moth screen. The relationship between the prey and predator were explained to the campers through games sessions each night. The campers got thrilled spotting an Indian Chameleon (Chamaeleo zeylanicus), Spotted Deers (Axis axis), Sambars (Rusa unicolor), Slender Loris (Loris iyddekerianus), Black-naped Hare (Lepus nigricollis) and camp sites regular visitor Wild Boar (Sus scrofa).

Apart from this, they were also interacted with the forest department staff to know their painful efforts taken for protecting the forest. The healthy vegetarian foods, juices, tea, snack, etc. at the right time kept the kids active always.

Finally, in the feedback session campers were given the opportunity to voice their feelings, opinions and constructive feedback regarding the camp. Most importantly, they learned the importance and balance of nature and their role in conservation along with the importance of teamwork, consideration, tolerance, and understanding from nature.