This weekend (Friday 7 – Saturday 8 June), we’re running 24 hours of events to celebrate our local biodiversity here in Southampton.
The event is proving popular – with the bat walks already fully booked – but there’s still time to sign up to many of the interactive activities.
On Friday evening, join several wildlife experts for a . Talks will include topics such as palm oil and the rainforest, deforestation, bats in Southampton, butterfly conservation and the wildlife in Southampton Common.
Then join the exciting events on Saturday, starting with a from 04:30-06:30. Following this, the will begin at 07:00 and will continue until 19:00. There will be reptile handling, a children’s activity tent, worksheets and identification guides available throughout the day. On offer will also be bug hotel building, face painting, biodiversity games, treasure hunting, tree rubbings, insect ID鈥檌ng and skull displays and much more.
Jack Merrifield, PGR student in the Faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences has attended three BioBlitz events here at Southampton and will be leading a bat walk this year:
“It’s been great to see so many returning families getting involved with this crucially important long-term effort to monitor and preserve biodiversity through public engagement. Its always fun to help demystify cryptic species, such as bats, for our visitors by giving them first-hand experience in seeing and listening to them in the wild. It’s rewarding to see young children in particular forming new meaningful associations with the natural world and I always get comments from older visitors throughout the event about how fascinating the species are that we find together.”
Don’t miss out on your opportunity to attend by registering for the , and .
