A GROUP of West Fife schoolchildren have been left devastated after special posters they created were ripped down just days after they had been put up in a Dunfermline wood.

The Primary 5 class from Duloch Primary have been working on two conservation projects and had been hoping to spread their message to a wider audience.

They designed posters and put them up in Calais Woods on Friday, however, their teacher, Aimee Ross, was disappointed to discover on Sunday that most of them had already disappeared.

"The children are really frustrated," she told the Press. "They spent a lot of time talking about it and the whole thing was to inform people but they didn't have much of a chance – they just went up on Friday."

One of the aspects of their work was that the children had to "look after" a wild place and this got them thinking about ways of reducing risks in the woods for people and wildlife.

"They decided to do posters and they got permission to do this as they were worried about putting posters up and creating more litter," explained Mrs Ross.

"One of their main concerns when they were putting them up was what if someone ruins their posters. We had a little discussion about this and said the point of the posters was to let people know how they can be safe so we persuaded them to put them up.

"Each of the children did one so there were close to 30 posters dotted around on the trees close to the path and they were on a range of topics from wearing long sleeves to avoiding tics to picking up litter and picking up dog poo.

"I was out for a walk on Sunday and some had been ripped down. It is such a shame. A lot of effort had gone into those posters and most of them were down after only two days.

"The children noticed that the posters were sprayed with juice, ripped and some of them were even burned."

Primary 5 pupil Eden said: "It makes me feel sad that some people haven't cared and that's what our posters are about – not littering – but that's just what they've done."

Classmate Ronan added: "They went you out of their way to be mean when someone has done a good thing."