GCS Wild Flight Launched with two Eco-Schools in South Africa

The 13th of March has proven to be a very important day for the Amur Falcon in South Africa in 2019 and 2020.

In 2019, the 13th of March was marked as the start of a big rescue and rehabilitation operation of the Amur Falcon after a terrible hailstorm injured more than 1 000 of them in the Midlands area of Kwazulu Natal (KZN), South Africa.

On the 13th of March 2020, the WESSA Eco-Schools programme launched a project to learn more about and initiate ways to protect these migratory birds, Amur Falcon, when they are in South Africa. This project is called the Global Citizenship for Sustainability’s Wild Flight and is in partnership with Eco-Schools in India (Centre for Environmental Education) and Mongolia (FEE Mongolia).    

Two of the WESSA Eco-Schools, Treverton Preparatory School and College and King’s School, in the KZN Midlands area were selected to take part in this project because they are located close to a few roosting sites of the Amur Falcon. Along with WESSA, these two schools have formed a task team on learning and sharing important facts and stories about the Amur Falcon.

At the launch of the project in South Africa, Cindy-Lee Cloete (WESSA Eco-Schools) facilitated a process of organizing creative ideas for action conservation projects on the Amur Falcon in South Africa, and specifically the Midlands area in KZN. Kristi Garland from BirdLife South Africa gave the task team a good overview of the Amur Falcon in South Africa and also made a generous donation of 7 binoculars and 7 bird identification guides to the project.

As the South African Amur Falcon team, we are very excited to work with the Indian and Mongolian task teams to learn more about how schools from different countries can work together to advance sustainability.