The Craft a Critter Competition was an invitation to students and all Australians to create an artistic depiction of a chosen threatened species. Craft a Critter aims to raise awareness in the community of Australia’s remarkable and unique threatened wildlife. It also provides an information sharing and educational tool to occupy kids, students and adults as they spend more time at home. The only thing they asked was to reduce, re-use and recycle - to use materials found around the home or garden. A list of nationally threatened species, a list of Threatened Species Strategy priority species and provisional lists of animals, plants and invertebrates in need of urgent intervention following the most recent bushfire season, can be found here. The Craft a Critter competition was judged by biologist and frog expert, Dr Jodi Rowley and Australia’s Threatened Species Commissioner, Dr Sally Box.
Northern Corroboree Frog
My Threatened Species Commissioner#CraftACritter out in the wild! You guessed it. It’s a recycled cutlery Northern Corroboree frog! Look closely and you’ll see some forks, spoons, a cake server and some old nuts and bolts. Picked up everything from @the_green_shed_cbr. Why the critically endangered Northern Corroboree frog? Well, we’re lucky enough to live right next to Tidbinbilla Nature reserve. Tidbinbilla manages highly successful breeding program - you might have read about it during the fires as they had to be evacuated to safety. It is the largest captive breeding program - less than 1000 remain in the wild. Tidbinbilla release released around 200 captive-bred frogs into the wild each year - they are released when they are one, and their individual ‘ventral’ pattern is photographed for identification purposes. The massive biodiversity loss suffered this bushfire season and changing climate mean conserving endangered native populations is more important than ever. Further information on Corroboree frogs, and how you can help can be found on the national Corroboree Frog website: www.corroboreefrog.com.au/
This submission received a Highly Commended in the Open Category.