Wickepin Community Resource Centre $3.3k grant funds Wise Up for Wildlife: Wickepin Against Litter project

Wickepin’s new community-led project Wise Up for Wildlife dedicated to reducing litter and educating people has received a boost, allocated more than $3000 in State Government funding

Collaborators Wickepin Community Resource Centre and Wickepin Festival have launched Wise Up for Wildlife: Wickepin Against Litter, a project that has been handed $3300 through the State Government’s Community Litter Grant.

School students have been researching the district’s landscapes for the past six months to present through posters, highlighting the damage litter causes to the environment.

The posters will be displayed at the Wickepin Festival on February 21.

At the festival, Critters Up Close and Birds of Prey WA will put on an informative exhibition so event-goers can have an up-close experience with the animals and learn how litter negatively impacts their habitat and risks their lives.

Wickepin CRC chief executive Lauren McColl said the project aimed to inform diverse groups by engaging children, parents, community members and tourists, plus hosting it at the festival reached a wide audience all in one place.

She said the students’ poster competition would be immensely beneficial as it encouraged learning about the environment in a creative way and that the older kids were at the age where they could understand their own research and apply it to their lifestyle.

Wise Up for Wildlife was inspired by Keep Australia Beautiful and charged by community and tourist feedback highlighting the copious amounts of rubbish in the region, which the Wickepin CRC heard about while offering litter packs over the summer to travellers.

Ms McColl said she too had noticed an increase in litter around the area.

“When dispensing the litter packs we did have quite a few say ‘oh, these are wonderful because we are noticing more and more litter’,” she said.

“When it’s holiday time you notice along the sides of the road that bins are full and people dump their litter near the bin instead of taking it with them to other stop points.

“It’s a sense of pride as well, people don’t want to see litter around because it doesn’t look nice, it makes the town look bad.

“Bringing wildlife into it gives people an extra reason to think twice about littering. It’s not just about vanity but protecting out environment, waterways and wildlife.”