love art and wildlife? join our global youth art contest

We're so excited you've received your Jane Goodall Institute Australia resource box and want to learn more about our International Youth Art Contest!

Every year, in celebration of World Wildlife Day, IFAW (International Fund for Animal Welfare) hosts an exciting International Youth Art Contest in collaboration with the Secretariat of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Children aged four to 18 are encouraged to tap into their creativity and create an artwork that aligns with the year’s World Wildlife Day theme and submit it to the contest.

In previous years we have received hundreds of entries from dozens of countries all over the world. Semi-finalists and one separate prize winner are selected by a prestigious international panel of judges. Their name will be announced, and their entry featured at the annual World Wildlife Day event held on March 3 every year.

• Check out the 2023 winner.
• Check out the 2022 winner and entries.
• Check out the 2021 winner.
• Check out the 2020 winner - Australia’s very own Tiarn Garland.

See below for examples of some of the previous artwork submissions.

Check back later in the year for the next competition.

see how ifaw protects Australian wildlife

Meet Bear – the USC x IFAW koala detection dog. Bear is an Australian koolie dog who can smell what humans can’t see, including koalas.

Finding koalas can be a difficult task. They camouflage well, they are quiet, and usually sit very still. Dogs like Bear, together with his team mates from the University of the Sunshine Coast’s (USC) Detection Dogs for Conservation (DDC) are our secret weapon in finding and helping koalas.

Bear is trained on the scent of koala fur which means he can find live koalas hiding up in tall eucalyptus trees. Bear will drop to the ground and refuse to budge, indicating to us that it’s time to scan the canopy above and find the koala. This is a tough moment for Bear, as he looks expectantly at us. We always wonder what he thinks, but we believe it’s something like “Come on humans! Unbelievable. Can’t you smell that? It’s as obvious as a koala nose in the middle of a koala face!” (a familiar French phrase). When we finally set our eyes on the koala, Bear gets his ball as a reward. For him that is heaven!

Bear is one of several dogs in the DDC team. The others are just as talented as Bear but instead of sniffing out live koalas – they sniff out koala scats (poo). The team then collects the poo and analyses it so we can understand more about the health of koalas.

Successfully training dogs to find koalas means we can work faster and with greater accuracy to protect them and the places they call home.

Learn more about your favourite animal and how ifaw protects them.

Find ways you can help wildlife.

Here are some fun activities to do at home to learn more about wildlife!