Tipperary festival to celebrate biodiversity

Clonmel Applefest are planning a day of biodiversity awareness activities on Saturday August 19 at Clonmel’s Denis Burke Park.
The event,Wild Child day, will focus on learning and enjoying the natural world and biodiversity around us and will be run in conjunction with Suircan Environmental.

It will feature artist Lynn Kirkham of the Greenmantle and long-time Applefest craft facilitator Elke Wilson, both working with willow to create striking objects.
Entomologist /insect specialist Louise Garcia and some of her biodiversity course students will be handling the fun biodiversity activities on the day.

Members of the public are invited to participate in a fish-themed lantern-making workshop with Elke Wilson as well as witness and help in the construction of a giant willow salmon, both of which will be featured at Applefest’s Harvest procession which will take place later in September.

CARE MESSAGES
Indeed, on the day, the organisers will inaugurate this year’s message-making activity, themed around the concept of care and its wisdom for our age: what do we care about? What do we care for? And what wisdom can we draw from this knowledge?
The ‘care messages’ will be attached to the wisdom salmon and carried through the town as part of the annual joyous street procession which will culminate with a fire ceremony in the park on Saturday September 23.

Other activities on Wild Child day will focus on insect-life histories and plant-insect interactions for the benefit of biodiversity as hosted by Louise Garcia and her team of biodiversity students under the helm of Suircan Environmental.
This will include river dipping, ie sampling of the aquatic habitat in the river Suir to see early life stages of damselflies, mayflies, and water beetles and sweeping and beating of terrestrial vegetation to uncover the diversity of adult bugs, beetles and caterpillars.

TREASURE HUNT
Easy to use pictorial keys will allow children and their families to identify invertebrate and learn more about them.
There will also be ‘treasure hunt’ type activities linking butterflies and moths to their food plants in the park, and a special tree species trail, rating trees according to the insect species diversity they can support.

The aim is for participants to link plant diversity to insect abundance, and realise the connection to bats and birds like swallows, sand martins and swifts encountered in the park.
Visitors will also be offered to learn how to do a flower-insect timed count. This will enable them to observe bumblebees, honeybees, solitary bees and other pollinating insects and to quantify pollinator interactions on flowers of a chosen species and upload their data to the national database via the smartphone app.

As an active recorder for the National Biodiversity Data Centre, Louise will supervise the verification and uploading of records of species identified during the day.
The day is suited to ‘wild children’ of all ages who enjoy outdoor activities. Please dress appropriately for the weather and setting (raincoats, wellies, hats, sunscreen). More information can be obtained on the Clonmel Applefest website.