Green Capital / bioblitz
Green Capital:Bristol’s biggest ever BioBlitz
Bristol’s BioBlitz has become a regular fixture on the wildlife calendar but this year, with the backing of Bristol 2015, the Oldbury Court event is set to encourage thousands of nature enthusiasts to find and identify as many different species of birds, bugs, plants and mini-beasts as they can before the clock runs out.
Savita Custead, CEO of the Bristol Natural History Consortium, says they want to “make it a huge event and see if we can get thousands, instead of hundreds of people, wildlife recording”.
The BioBlitz is not just an empty exercise – it is a vital tool to help manage Bristol’s green spaces. Custead says unless they understand what currently lives in a site it is impossible to make any decisions on how to take care of the space.
is needed now More than ever
“Until the site managers know which species are doing well, which species are under threat – it’s really hard to make any decisions about any changes to the site…it just becomes a bit of a guessing game really.”
Oldbury Court in Fishponds is just three miles from Bristol City Centre but it is a wildlife haven according to Custead.
“We have a great amount of different habitats in Oldbury Court. We will be doing lots of pond dipping, looking for a lot of freshwater species to look at how healthy the streams are, there is also a lot of different plants and trees in the space, we will try to find as may as we can and mammals to lichen to spiders – we are hoping to find 1000 different species this year.
“Previously we have found in the hundreds but this is a much bigger event, it’ s a bigger site so we are bringing in a lot more volunteers to help us. The key thing to recording more species is to get as many people as possible out there as our eyes and ears.”
The weekend is not all about counting though. There will be interactive activities for children, grown-ups, beginners and experts including worm charming, spider spotting, pond dipping, moth trapping and bug hunting. There will be the chance to go on a dawn chorus walk, stroll along a tree trail, follow tracks and signs and look out for wild flowers.
The more people who turn up the more we will learn about nature says Custead: “Bristol has some of the highest levels of amateur wildlife recording and we want to get more and more people out volunteering and helping us look for and look after nature.”
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