DUNKELD Consolidated School hosted a wildlife clinic for all of their students which was organised by their Student Representative Committee (SRC).

The Wildlife clinic was run by Nick Petropoulos who had a wide range of animals including snakes, crocodiles, lizards, bearded dragons and sugar gliders.

SRC members said they found out that World Wildlife Day was coming up and members of the SRC, Korey Benney and Freddie Jury, remembered that one of their buddy’s dad was a zookeeper and approached Mr Petropoulos to talk about presenting his animals to the school.

“We are really looking forward to learn more about all the animals that are being presented to our school, we are also looking to gather more information about World Wildlife Day,” SRC members, Korey Benney and Freddie Jury said on Friday morning.

Friday, March 3 was World Wildlife Day; it is a United Nations International Day to celebrate all the world’s wild animals and plants and the contribution that they make to our lives and the health of the planet.

This year, the theme was “Partnerships for Wildlife Conservation”. It allowed people to celebrate all conservation efforts, from intergovernmental to a local scale. Within this theme, the day had a focus on two sub-topics, marine life and oceans with around 70 per cent of our planet being covered by water - the impact of marine conservation is incredibly important.

As well as business and finance - global conservation efforts need to be funded and this work needs to be done in collaboration with business - an area that, in the past, has been exploitative and unsustainable.

Successful partnerships for conservation must find ways of including business if we are to reverse the loss in biodiversity.