FOUR girls from Loreto Secondary School in Bray, Co Wicklow, together with their biology teacher Mary Lee, are going for a walk on the wild side - they are off on a 10 day safari trip to Africa.

The students won first prize in the Zoofari Competition, a national competition run by Dublin Zoo for secondary schools.

The girls found out about their win on their first day back at school and excitement is running high in the 788 pupil school.

Each project entered in the competition had to address the theme of zoos giving "animals with no chance a last chance" and had to justify the existence of zoos.

"I wasn't totally against zoos," says Aideen O'Neill, a member of the winning group, "but I did think that they were about animals in wire cages and that they were there for show. We have changed our views."

Another member of the group, Linda Tormey, agrees enthusiastically with this. "They aren't just there for show," she says. As they explained in their project, zoos play an important part in preserving and nurturing endangered species, as well as educating and increasing awareness amongst the public.

The girls sent a questionaire to zoos all around the world and got replies from them.

"We asked them what endangered species they had," she reports. They compiled all the information they got back. They also compiled a history of the evolution of zoos.

The girls learned more about zoos than they had bargained for. For example, there is a zoo in Denmark which is helping to preserve the Bornean orang utan, Grevy's zebra and the cheetah, while a zoo in Canada has the Siberian tiger and the Addax antelope.

"We expanded on the Siberian tiger and did a case study of it." Zoos in North America have a programme which is aimed at preserving this animal, Linda explains. They are not sure yet where their safari in Africa will be, but that's a detail. In the meantime, they are getting ready for their mid term trip of a life time. The jungle drums are probably beating a welcome already.