As part of Hong Kong's City Nature Challenge I am organising our own little bioblitz back at Lions Nature Education Centre......This will be the second Bio-Blitz at this once lovely park; and with pond restoration and seasonal blooms and bugs, we hope to make a valuable record of wildlife and animals. The idea is to map this data with a)previous data, to hopefully show some improvement and b)what we would expect to see that this time (for example at least 20 of the 31 species of dragonflies recorded here; or 122 species of butterfly; with 707 species of insect recorded to date...lets see how we do - and what effect the habitat has had on numbers).
FACEBOOK EVENT PAGE
Its easy to take part...just download the app, turn up, take photos and help record species numbers. I will be there on the dates/times shown on the event page, and I am happy to meet to talk photography, or talk about wildcreatures vol. II, and my next projects.
LNEC BioBlitz #2. . This is a communal citizen-science effort to record as many species (in our case using iNaturalist App and our smartphones/mobile devices), within a designated location (Lions Nature Education Centre/LNEC in SaiKung) within a defined time period in 2021. This second LNEC Bioblitz is a great way to engage the park management along with interested members of the public, to connect to their environment and record the biodiversity of the park. The plan is to build these out on a quarterly basis to reflect the seasonal variations. This is particularly relevant at the moment where park management has destroyed much valuable habitat, and we have witnessed a serious habitat and subsequent biodiversity loss. It is hoped that through this, and subsequent projects, that we can work together to increase the numbers recorded, and ensure more and better wildlife habitat and more enjoyment of the wonderful creatures that live in this area. Scientists, relevant NGOS, concerned members of the public, and the Government of the SAR's (BSAP) report all highlight the KEY THREAT to nature is HABITAT DEGRADATION. When we adopt that “Conservation of biodiversity is important to the sustainable development of the city” what are the key actions we can do to help stop this? Firstly, the park management of LNEC should be engaged in a positive manner to help them appreciate the tragic consequences of their past decisions, with a view to better habitat and biodiversity management from now, and in the future. Recording successes of objectives against (government) goals to “provide a network of habitats in the middle of the urban area for wildlife in particular birds and butterflies” would be a great programme. The Bioblitz can generate locally and scientifically valuable biodiversity data. It is important that we are able to objectively record the habitat and biodiversity in the Lion’s Nature Education Centre. A larger primary goal is to connect people to nature, and by that we mean getting people to feel that the non-human world has personal significance, and is worth protecting. Scaling up the bioblitz in the future is a great way to engage the local community and schools. But we need to start somewhere.
BioBlitz information here: