Get wild for a good cause this Easter

THE Ballarat Wildlife Park will be hosting an easter event with a difference this long weekend.

Held over three days from Good Friday until Easter Sunday, the event aims to promote palm free products and animal conservation.

As part of the weekend, kids are asked to use clues to locate the names of animals at the park, and then they’ll receive a treat.

“It’s all about getting kids out and about how to identify animals,” said zookeeper Meryem Zeryek-Hallam.

“We would love to do something like an easter egg hunt but obviously that doesn’t make sense because we’ve got animals around and we don’t want any to eat too much chocolate.

“Whoever wins will get a palm oil free egg for easter.”

It is part of the event Ballarat Wildlife Park is aiming to have a completely palm oil free cafe.

“In Sumatra, an island in Indonesia where out tigers are from, almost 50 per cent of forest has been lost in 20 years due to palm oil plantations,” said Ms Zeryek-Hallam. “It causes so much destruction.

“Animals lose their homes and Sumatra is a place with so much diversity it needs to be protected.

“Also animals that tigers eat can’t live there any more so the tigers can’t eat and end up quite close to human populations which can cause conflict.”

Ms Zeryek-Hallam said the park wants to encourage people to go palm oil free in their everyday lives and that there are easy to find alternative products.

“Palm oil is not something that has to be labelled legally and it is often hidden as vegetable oil, so we want to bring awareness to what it is and how its easily missed in a lot of our everyday products,” she said.

She encourages people to go palm oil free this Easter.

“With easter of course we all buy chocolate but brands like Darrell Lee are 100 per cent palm oil free,” she said.