Wildlife in school grounds

​​Wildlife in school grounds

School grounds are great homes for a variety of wildlife.

A lot of animals and birds are active outside of school hours, mainly around dusk and dawn. This allows animals to be undisturbed.

You don’t need to have a separate space in your school grounds for wildlife, biodiversity in your school can be improved by adding the right features throughout the grounds.

How to attract wildlife into school grounds

You can attract wildlife to into your school grounds by:

• planting trees and hedges to offer shelter and resting spots for birds 
• hanging bird feeders to provide food
• making animal homes such as bat boxes, hedgehog homes and bird boxes
• creating a pond to attract animals lik​e frogs and allow aquatic plants to grow
  
• leaving log piles, twigs and leaves to rot to provide a habitat for insects
  
• planting a wildflower meadow to attract insects and birds
• creating a compost heap as a habitat and to reuse of fruit and vegetable waste
• leaving out small dishes of water for thirsty animals to drink in hot weather
  

Monitoring and recording wildlife in school grounds

You can track the wildlife visiting your school grounds by recording what you see.

Completing wildlife surveys and interpreting the information can be linked to various parts of the curriculum, from maths and science to art and literacy. 

Some schools have installed cameras into bird, squirrel, or bat boxes to watch what is going on without disturbing the wildlife.

Send your observations to the Jersey Biodiversity centre, which welcomes wildlife recordings from schools. 

Jersey Biodiversity Centre​