Life

Get Blitzed and do your bit for the environment this summer

IF YOU have a competitive streak and fancy doing your bit for the environment then why not volunteer to help out with next month's BioBlitz project?

The cross-border event involves a race against time to see how many species can be recorded in a 24-hour biological survey of four of Ireland's heritage sites.

The chosen sites include the Glenarm Estate in Co Antrim; Howth Head in Dublin; the Cong/ Clonbur Woodlands in Mayo and Derrynane National Historic Park in Kerry.

BioBlitz 2014 will start at 5pm on Friday May 23 and end precisely 24 hours later at 5pm on Saturday May 24.

Members of the public are invited to observe the activities, to interact with the recorders and to participate in the range of other activities arranged by the host venues.

The organisers say: "By pitting the four venues against each other, it will bring an added dimension to the event, allowing comparisons to be made between the sites, and to gain further insights into the relative biological richness

of the different habitats. "Ireland's BioBlitz is designed to increase public awareness of the variety of life in Ireland and to highlight some of the ecological services that biodiversity provides to enhance our quality of life at the global and the local level. "It is also hoped to demonstrate the high level of skill and expertise necessary to study many aspects of Ireland's biological diversity.''

At each site a 'base camp' will serve as the hub for the BioBlitz activities and will be managed by staff of the host site and the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

People unable to attend the events will be able to monitor progress on the BioBlitz website at Bioblitz. biodiversityireland.ie.

The winning site will be the one that has the largest number of species logged on-line by the cut-off time, with a specially designed certificate presented to the victors by the National Biodiversity Data Centre.

The name of the winning site will be added to a perpetual BioBlitz trophy, to go beside the names of the previous winners Connemara National Park, Killarney National Park, Crawfordsburn Country Park and Colebrooke Estate.

A complete species list for each site will be finalised and the records will be mapped on Biodiversity Maps, the National Biodiversity Data Centre's mapping system.

Each participating site will be provided with a separate hard copy species list for its own use. Anyone interested in volunteering should contact Maria Walsh at Howth Head via mwalsh@biodiversityireland.ie, or Glenarm Estate's Pauline Campbell at pauline.campbell@nmni.com.