Winning poem, story

Press, 28 August 1979, Page 14

Winning poem, story

“Save the Creatures,” was the heading that Tania Prasad chose for her entry in the recent Conservation Week story and poem competition. ; ' Her poem was Clearly the best, according to the judges, and we should read it, so here it is: The birds and bees are back, The insects and animals are, back. The green green trees are back, With the colourful little creatures. The twitter and the happiness Of the birds that are gaily mating, The tender little fish are swishing their tails,

And the moth looks as it it were saying, “Thank you for looking after me.” The sparkling green grass is covered with dew, And the morning sun is shining brightly overhead. This is what we should be doing now, Cleaning the forests and the things, That the little creatures might live in. Craig Dolphin, the other prize winner, is younger than most of the children who wrote stories and poems about conservation; but he showed that he has an enquiring mind and also some imagination.

Here is his story: We could save endangered birds by growing their favourite trees with their food. Some of the birds in danger of becoming extinct are, the black robin, stitchbirds, the brown kiwi, the takahe, kokako, the night parrot and the buff weka. Between 65 and 130 million years ago a small fragment of land broke away from a giant supercontinent called Gondwanaland, and this was New Zealand as we know it. Time has altered it considerably. In this land dwelt the ancestors of moas and kiwis. Moas ranged from tall giraffe-necked moas

which browsed on foliage to stocky moas which grazed on shrubbery. Over tens of millions of years as New Zealand assumed its present position, remote from other land masses, the birds changed; but today we must be careful that cats and dogs are kept in control, because they kill birds and eat them.

That is Craig’s message, and it shows that he is aware of the importance of conservation, although he can cover a few million years in a few wards. Some of his spelling has had to be corrected because 'his use of words is beyond his spelling capacity for his age.