Pupils beaver away to tackle climate change

Fife-based John Muir Award group gets hands-on with flooding, biodiversity and land management.

Pupils from Levenmouth Academy in Fife worked with Bat’s Wood - a social enterprise - to turn five acres of former playing fields near their school, into a healthy wood. Not only did their impressive effort help manage flooding and capture carbon in their local community, but it also counted towards a John Muir Award ensuring that everyone involved - including pupils, teachers and community members - felt recognised and celebrated. 

Pupils surveyed and evaluated the grounds before designing and planting an orchard of 200 fruit trees and 4,000 native trees. They also created habitats for wildlife by digging ditches for diversity, installing bird and bat boxes, creating a wormery and planting 10,000 bulbs. 

The John Muir Award is part of the outdoor learning and community engagement efforts at Levenmouth Academy. Their teacher Duncan Zuill said: "The John Muir Award is wildly important to the development of healthy active learners who know why they should value their more-than-human surroundings."

This practical project introduced the pupils to issues like flooding, biodiversity and land management for climate change - encouraging them to think like beavers and capture their experience in a short film Becoming Beavers in Bats Wood.

"This fantastic film is Learning for Sustainability in action - the young people’s empathy and care for the natural world shines through," said our John Muir Award Scotland Education Manager Rebecca Logsdon. 

"The film has been really well received by practioners across Scotland as an inspiration for learning and teaching. It shows a way to explore natural solutions to climate change and the practical ways we can all help."

• Find out more about Bat's Wood - a volunteer-run charity that works closely with Levenmouth Academy and has a high level of pupil involvement in its fund-raising, planting events and gardening both during the school day and at weekends. 
• Find out more about the John Muir Award and how we can help protect and enhance wild places through learning in schools.