By Lisa Plessius
Caring for the environment is a huge part of scouting, so when the Eprapah environment team held their environment course for Venturer Scouts on the 21st and 22nd of March, 13 Venturer Scouts from the Gold Coast, Logan and Brisbane all said they would go. The amazing team at Eprapah – Chris Moriarty and Jean Howell – spent the weekend teaching us about the environment and the effect that we have on our planet as well as assisting us in removing fishbone fern from outside the Eprapah bunkhouse, leading to the discovery of a sensory trail overgrown with weeds.
Fishbone fern, while it may look pretty in our gardens at home, is a non-native plant to the area at Eprapah which means there is less space for the native plants and the wildlife that require the native plants in order to survive. On Sunday the 22nd, we also planted native plants into the area we had cleared to ensure more native vegetation and growth. In our efforts to help and care for the environment at Eprapah, we completed a sufficient amount of work to receive our Venturer Scout Award level Environment tape, a great reward for a great weekend.