Who cares about national parks?

STUDENT RESOURCE
Years 3-4

Aerial photo of Esmerelda Cove, Broughton Island, Myall Lakes National Park. Credit: John Spencer/DPIE

< Back to NSW National Parks Education learning resources

How to use this site

There are seven lessons in this learning unit. Each lesson includes factual information with links to NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) webpages, videos to watch and slide presentations to review. In each lesson, scientific terms and other words that may be unfamiliar to you are underlined and link to a glossary page. Activities are listed at the end of each lesson.

Find your way around the different lessons from this homepage, or by using the menu on the left.

Acknowledging Country

We start this learning unit with an Acknowledgement to Country to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land we live, work and go to school on.

Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for over 40,000 years. NPWS acknowledges that Aboriginal people are the traditional custodians of the land across NSW.

We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and honour the way Aboriginal people care for Country, land, water, plants and animals.

Landscape picture of Mungo National Park. Credit: John Spencer/DPIE

Mungo National Park is rich in Aboriginal history

Aboriginal hand stencils on a rock face in Yengo National Park. Credit: Jessica Herder/DPIE

Yengo National Park is home to many important Aboriginal cultural sites

Do you know the name of the Aboriginal nation in your local area or school?

Take a minute to close your eyes and think of the many people who call your area home.

Now think of the Aboriginal people who have also called this place home for thousands of years, and still do today.

You can do this Acknowledgement anytime you visit a new place, national park or start your school day.

Come along as we take you on a tour through some of the incredible national parks in NSW. You’ll find out what makes these places special and learn how we can all work together to care for them.

Why should we care about national parks?

National parks across the world are amazing places; and protected for this very reason. We are very lucky to have them.

In NSW, there are more than 895 national parks and reserves protected to support a rich variety of plants and animals and their habitats. These parks:

provide safe homes for millions of animals and plants
preserve important Aboriginal cultural places
provide special places for people to do recreational activities such as bushwalking, camping, kayaking and mountain biking.

We love national parks and we are sure you will too after doing this learning unit – if you don't already.