Are you game to be Park Ranger?

Protecting Phillip Island’s (near Melbourne) unique wildlife and managing the natural environment are all in a day’s work for a nature parks ranger, and a new mobile game gives kids the opportunity to roll up their sleeves and take on the role of a ranger to protect various species from Victoria’s wildlife island.

TT Bureau

The Phillip Island Park Ranger game brings conservation activities to life and puts the gamer in charge of managing the island’s natural habitat and protecting wildlife species like Australian fur seals, little penguins, hooded plovers, shearwaters and more, through a series of five challenging mini-games.

Players could find themselves monitoring the Australian fur seal population out at Seal Rocks and disentangling a pup from fishing line, next they could be removing marine debris from one of Phillip Island’s many beautiful beaches and protecting the endangered hooded plovers.

Roland Pick, Communications Executive, Phillip Island Nature Parks, says, “This game includes the kinds of tasks our rangers and researchers carry out every day, and will give kids a great insight into the role these dedicated people play in conserving the environment for our incredible wildlife.”

He further informs, “We developed Phillip Island Park ranger to give kids the chance to engage with conservation issues and actions in a fun and relatable way, using real examples of conservation activities in a real setting. However, many kids today already have such a great understanding of the need for conservation.”

The game features a control centre from where rangers can monitor their tasks and move seamlessly from removing weeds in the shearwater habitat on Cape Woolamai to repairing the electronic circuitry on the penguin weighbridge at the Penguin Parade.

Each successfully completed task earns experience points and kids earn bonus points for tasks completed while playing on Phillip Island. Completing all the levels once, rangers can upgrade their control centre, improve their ranger rating and ultimately be rewarded with a free child’s four Parks Pass to visit the Penguin Parade, Antarctic Journey, Koala Reserve and Churchill Island.

Phillip Island Park Ranger is free to download, contains no ads and has no in-app purchases. Parents need not worry since the game is completely safe and suitable for children aged five and up. Younger kids can also play it, but they might need a hand with mini-games.

The Rewards

• Completing all the levels once, rangers can upgrade their control centre and be rewarded with a free child’s four Parks Pass to visit the Penguin Parade, Antarctic Journey, Koala Reserve and Churchill Island