On the 1 August, we got a special visit from Conner Blair’s dad, Jason Blair.

He heard that we were looking into ‘disaster relief’ for our inquiry, so he came to talk to the senior syndicate about the SPCA’s role in protecting animal welfare. SPCA stands for, Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Animals are vulnerable during natural disasters because they cannot communicate with humans and remove themselves from harm's way. We learnt that the SPCA come in and scan the areas which have been affected by disaster, looking for pets that owners have left behind. If animals are microchipped they can easily be returned to their owners, but people need to remember to take their pets to the shelters with them so they do not get left behind in the first place.

Larger wild animals such as deer usually escape on their own, but small creatures often get trapped under their burrows and die. We also found out that that there is a special type of harness designed to carry large animals away with helicopters when they need rescuing.