The Big Butterfly Count 2021

It is that time of year again where the Butterfly Conservation Organisation are asking us to take part in the  annual Big Butterfly Count 2021!  This is a great activity to do over summer and will be especially useful this year as lots of us will be staying at home in the UK or perhaps travelling to different parts of the country too. You can collect data from wherever you are!  And the more data we collect, the more we can understand about how butterflies are doing in the UK and how we can help them.

Butterflies are a good indicator of the health of our environment.  The more species of butterfly we see, the healthier it means our environment is and the more varieties of plants and insects there are about.  There are thought to be around 60 types of common butterfly in the UK.  However, the numbers of butterflies and moths being recorded has significantly decreased since the 1970s due to land use change and habitat loss.  With the threat of climate change worsening and more extreme weather in the future, the outlook for butterflies does not look good.

The Butterfly Conservation Organisation therefore want us to help them survey butterflies in the UK and record where and when we are seeing them!  Visit their website https://bigbutterflycount.butterfly-conservation.org/about or download their app 'Big Butterfly Count' for more information on what to do.  The count lasts from 16 July until 8 August 2021.  Set aside 15 minutes to do a butterfly count (you can do more than one, perhaps even one every day!) and record your results on the app or website.  Even if you don't see any butterflies, you can still record it as this is useful information too.  The app also has a handy ID page to help you identify which butterflies you are seeing.  

Happy butterfly hunting!

For the love of bees

The celebration of World Bee Day this week drew attention to the plight of the world's bees and how our behaviours are contributing to their decline 🐝

Bees are some of our most important pollinators and they do a huge amount to ensure the diversity of our ecosystems.  We rely on them for the survival of our food crops most of which are pollinated by wild insects rather than by human intervention. Without them, this would cost us £1.8 billion to achieve!  Some bees provide us with other luxuries such as honey. These bees are often kept in hives but also contribute to the pollination of farm crops.  

Sadly, bee populations are now in decline. This is due to five main causes:

❌ Habitat loss - replacing natural areas with intense farming land or urban developments deprives bees of the wildflowers and meadows that they usually thrive on

❌ Climate change - changes in weather patterns are affecting the times that flowers bloom and bees are struggling to adapt to these changes meaning that they miss out on important food sources

❌ Pesticides - these are harmful to bees and often either kill them or prevent them from reproducing 

❌ Pests -  honeybees can be particularly susceptible to pests and disease which can spread through their hove colony; beekeepers should make sure they check on the health of their hives to stop diseases spreading to other populations

❌ Invasive species - some non-native bee species pose a threat to the survival of UK bees and so these species need to be kept an eye on to ensure their numbers don't become threatening

So what can you do to help?

🐝 Get planting!  Even in you just have a windowsill or window box, get some wildflower seeds and create a little pollen pit-stop for bees to refuel on as they fly past

🐝 Let the grass grow! Try not mowing your lawn or at least leave part of it unmowed for bees to feed and shelter in 

🐝 Leave off the pesticide! Pesticides do so much harm and there are easy alternatives such as using diluted washing up liquid water to remove aphids

🐝 Plant through the seasons! If you have a garden, try to include a range of plants that will flower and seed through spring, summer and autumn to give bees the best chance of survival

For more ideas, visit Friends of the Earth at friendsoftheearth.uk/nature/10-easy-ways-help-bees for some more tips and ideas 🐝

Walk to School 2021

This week is Walk to School week! 👣

The five-day challenge will take place from 17th-21st May and will encourage everyone to get to school by walking, cycling, scooting, parking & striding.... anything to get people travelling in a clean and sustainable way that will benefit our planet and local community.

Every school day, the school run adds a huge volume of traffic to our roads in the mornings and afternoons.  This puts large volumes of carbon emissions into the atmosphere which contributes to climate change.  It also impacts on the air quality in our local area which can have a negative effect on the health of children who are trying to walk or cycle to school and end up breathing in the fumes. 

Making the effort to walk or cycle into school this week will help to challenge and reframe our perception that it's easier to drive everywhere or that it's just too much hassle to walk.  Walking has so many benefits and not just to your physical health; it has been shown to improve concentration, boost creativity, and give people a better connection to their environment and nature.  You notice more when you're walking and it's fantastic to see the changes in your local area from one season to another. 

I've been trying to walk to school at least once a week (usually on a Friday) and to be honest, I really look forward to listening to a podcast on the walk in, and then taking a slightly longer more scenic route back home at the end of the day.  It really helps me to unwind at the end of the week, and it signals that it's the weekend and that I'm ready to relax and recover from a hectic week.  It's also shown me that it's not really that hard to walk in each day... and I can easily still do any errands on the way which I don't really need a car for.  And it saves money on petrol too!

Living Streets has a fantastic website with lots of information and ideas about how to help your school have a successful Walk to School week. Visit them here at www.livingstreets.org.uk 👣

No Mow May

It's #NoMowMay!! 🐝🐛🐜🐞🌱

The month of May is when all the grasses and wildflowers such as dandelions and buttercups start to sprout up and grow in abundance in people's back gardens, public parks and countryside.  These provide a rich and sheltered habitat for bees and butterflies to live in, and these tiny creatures perform valuable tasks such as pollination which help to spread diversity and colour throughout our landscape.

Mowing these down will only reduce the biodiversity of the area and make it harder for animals and insects to exist in that environment.  No Mow May is a campaign to get people to think about their local ecosystems and to think twice before mowing their grassy areas just to make them look neat or tidy.

If you can leave an area to just go wild then that's the best option!  If you want to bring some sense of tidiness to your garden, try just mowing down the middle and leaving the edges to grow. Alternatively, get creative and mow different shapes such as a figure of eight into your lawn to break up the areas that are mowed/not mowed.  If you want to go even further, the National Trust has shared a video on how to make a 'scaremow' to encourage people not to mow their lawns.  

Not mowing your lawn is really crucial to protecting some of the UK's most valuable plant and insect species.  The Conservation Charity 'Plantlife' is asking people to do a survey of the plants and flowers in their lawn at the end of May to see the diversity of plants and flowers that have been able to grow.  You can also take part in their Great British Wildflower Hunt where they are asking people to go searching for different species and hopefully learn some new ones along the way. 

Why not take a look at their website www.plantlife.org.uk and see what you can learn or do in your local area 🌼

Protecting our coasts

The UK has around 18,000km of coastline which includes all kinds of valuable ecosystems from rockpools to sand dunes to estuaries.  Many of us will have been lucky enough to visit the coast on school holidays and some of us will even have the privilege of living with a beautiful beach or coastal stretch right on their doorstep.  Being an island, you are never more than 70 miles from the sea in Britain and our coastlines are beautiful landscapes that we need to appreciate and protect.  

Lots of UK beaches have Blue Flag Awards which means they have met the criteria for water quality, environmental management and safety.  This is fantastic as it means they are clean and safe to visit with our children and pets, and can support wildlife that thrive in their ecosystems.  However, our beaches are still subject to littering, whether that be from visitors, tourists or wild campers, or washed up by the sea itself.  Microplastics are a real problem as they are invisible and cannot simply be picked up out of the environment.  

The recent documentary 'Seaspiracy' highlighted the impact of the fishing industries on our seas, oceans and coastlines.  It claims that the majority of plastic waste in the oceans comes from fishing nets and that a huge amount of damage and devastation is carried out by trawler fishing.  When we buy and eat fish, we contribute to this industry and this in turn may have an impact on the biodiversity in our seas and the quality of our coastlines both at home and abroad.

We can take some simple steps to protect coastlines everywhere.  Making efforts to clean up the beach or change behaviours that prevent beaches from getting polluted or degraded are both equally effective.

🐬 Take part in a beach clean up - get a community group or a school group to do a litter pick along a stretch of coastline; this not only actively cleans the beach but it helps educate and raise awareness of how polluted our beaches can get 

🐬 Stop buying plastic items - we know this already but it's so hard to fully commit to; make one swap this week that will save  some more plastic

🐬 Wash your clothes with ecofriendly detergent - our waterways have a lot of chemicals in them from both households and industry; try a different detergent that us gentler on the microorganisms that live in the water

🐬 Reduce your fish intake - eating less fish will reduce demand over time; this will allow fish populations to grow back and reestablish natural balance

🐬 Visit the coast - if you don't live near the coast, take a trip there or plan a visit with your local school; there is no alternative for actually visiting a place to help bring about an appreciation and understanding of it

If you live near the coast, why not develop a Beach School either alongside or instead of a Forest School!  Any learning in the outdoors is so important and all environments have something valuable to teach us. Click here to find out more. 

The power of worms

If you're looking for something new to add to your forest school or outdoor learning area, then consider building a wormery!  They may not sound like the most appealing of structures to have, but they can be absolutely brilliant for teaching about the importance of soil and the processes that happen within it.  If you happen to be on a school site, you can add some of your school's food waste to it as well which helps reduce the amount of food that goes to landfill.  Having a wormery provides a great teaching point and can really help educate children on what happens within soil and how decomposers are some of the most important organisms in the ecosystem.  

You can make a simple wormery that will last for about a week (visit the Wildlife Trusts website to find out more).  All you'll need is a large (1 litre) plastic bottle with the top cut off.  Build up several layers of garden soil, compost and sand, and top with some fallen leaves or old flowers.  Then, hunt down some worms and add them onto the top layer of the wormery.  The'll soon bury down and start decomposing all the decaying matter.  Secure the top with some cling film and an elastic band - don't forget to puncture some holes in the cling film! Wrap the bottle in some card to make it dark for the worms and place it in a cool part of your outdoor space.  Check the layers every so often to see how the worms are doing, and add a little water as necessary to stop it drying out.  Finally, when you have finished with your wormery, release the worms back into the wild so they can continue doing their important work under our feet!

To make it a more permanent structure, buy a wormery which comes with multiple trays and layers for the worms to work their way through. This acts similar to a compost bin but has the added excitement of seeing the worms doing their thing.  How much of the school's food waste can you fit in the wormery?!

Earth Day 2021

Today we have been celebrating Earth Day and it has given us a chance to stop for a moment and think about the impact we are having on earth, our common home.

We have had lots of good conversations in school today about what we do that harms our planet, and how we might go about changing those behaviours.  I have been so impressed with the ideas that children have had in school, and I think it just highlights the importance of making green choices every day and the significant impact this can have over time.

Schools are great places to start when trying to make big social change.  If we instil those green values in young people, then they are more likely to go on and make sustainable choices later in life.  They can also influence people around them and other communities outside of their school life.

For the last year or so, I have been exploring ways of making schools greener places to teach and learn.  Many of the actions we can take are ones we know already; turn lights off when you leave the room, recycle paper, bring a reusable water bottle, eat all your food at lunchtime etc.  However, these changes alone are not always enough to bring about significant change.  They are also difficult to remember to do in the hectic nature of a busy school day.  I'd like to offer a few different ideas that might help to make a difference over time.  Some of them might require more effort or time but I guarantee they'll make a difference (and might save some money too!) Let's see how many you might manage to do?! 

🌍 Exercise books are a huge cost and use of paper -> swap them for slim, cardboard files or folders - this will save paper and glue as you won't need to glue worksheets in all the time; it should also save you a good amount of money, and time as you won't have to trim worksheets down to fit into books

🌍 Food waste can be a big problem in schools -> involve children in deciding on the school menu - this will give them to opportunity to express a preference which will lead to less food waste; make sure you buy local and seasonal as well

🌍 Schools can be very harsh environments -> bring plants into the school and classroom - green has a calming effect on the mind and the plants will help to purify the air; you can make it a task or responsibility for children to have to look after them and water them on a regular basis

🌍 Lots of water goes down the drain every day -> install some rainwater harvesters around your school grounds - the water can be used for watering plants, topping up a bird bath, or creating a mini pond; develop a little outdoor space or forest school area in which to do outdoor learning

🌍 Uniforms are often bought new or thrown out after use -> create a system where uniforms can be passed down or bought second hand to save them going to landfill; it will save parents money too, and you should encourage children to care for their clothes and belongings and not treat them as disposable or replaceable items

It is also a great idea to create an eco-council or green club within your school so that children can take ownership of what happens and change comes from within.  Sign up to become an EcoSchool with eco-schools.org.uk and follow their steps to becoming a sustainable school community.

🌍  Happy Earth Day!  🌍