The Biodiversity and Bioblitz Festival is back for 2024!
To celebrate National Biodiversity Week 2024, MKO is teaming up with Portumna Community School and other project partners to host a Biodiversity Festival and Bioblitz in Portumna. Join us on the evening of Thursday May 23rd, and throughout May 24th in Portumna Community School, The Forest Park, The Irish Workhouse Centre, Portumna Castle and other venues in the town. There will be various biodiversity events, surveys, and of course, the BioBlitz competition!
What is a BioBlitz? It’s a race against the clock to find and identify as many species as possible within 24 hours. It’s a fun and educational way to learn about the amazing biodiversity right in our own backyard.
National Biodiversity Week Ireland takes place 17th – 26th May 2024.
The timetable of events is below. All events are free to attend and registration is not required.
| Time | Location | Event | |
| Thursday 23rd May | |||
| 7:30pm – 8:30pm | Portumna Community School | It all Kicks off! Join us at Portumna Community School to start the countdown timer to start the Bioblitz at 7:30pm on the 23rd May – we will also be setting up our surveys and talking about how we survey for moths and mammals. We will be setting up camera traps, moth traps, hedgehog tubes and explaining what we are doing and why we are doing it. We will be opening the traps and looking at the results at 9:00am on the 24th May at the school | |
| 9:30pm – 11:00pm | Irish Workhouse Centre | A night time tour around the Irish Workhouse Centre looking for bats. Bring torches and expect a spooky experience as our ecologists, take you around the workhouse explaining about bats, where we are likely to find them and how we survey for them before we go on a nocturnal foray with our bat detectors and thermal imaging cameras to search for the night time inhabitants of the buildings. | |
| Friday 24th May | |||
| 6:30am – 8:00am | Portumna Forest Park | Dawn Chorus walk in the woods and along the lake. Join our ornithologists as they go out to record bird species in the forest park and provide hints, tips and information about bird identification from song, call and sight. You might even see a red squirrel. | |
| 9:00am – 10:00am | Portumna Community School | Moth and small mammal trap opening | |
| 11:30am – 1:30pm | Portumna Forest Park – meeting at Marina | Water and woodlands Meet at Portumna marina for a demonstration of aquatic surveying methods and a view of the pond life within the lake. This will be followed by a foray into the forest park for a guided walk with forest ecologists to discuss ecologically friendly forestry practices and the biodiversity within the woodlands. Drew Bardell from Beith Tree Consultancy will join us on the woodland walk to talk about fungi and their role in the ‘wood wide web’ and the relationship between fungi and trees creating niche habitats by wood decay. With over 90% of fungi species still undocumented let’s hope we can identify a few! | |
| 2:30pm – 3:00pm | Portumna Community School | Conservation Detection Dogs demonstration. We use these furry friends to sniff our wildlife on ecological surveys and this is a chance to witness the synergy between the dogs and their handlers and for the dogs to show off their talents. | |
| 3:00pm | Portumna Community School | The count up All the ecologists will return to the school at 3pm on the 24th May to count up the species recorded in the Bioblitz. Here’s hoping for a good haul! | |
| 4:00pm – 5:00pm | Portumna Castle | Biodiversity in the Castle Our ecologists will descend on the Portumna Castle Grounds to provide an insight into the biodiversity and wildlife there. This will highlight the various habitats in and around the castle and will look at how they have been and can be enhanced. | |
| 7:30pm | The Irish Workhouse Centre | Birds of the Shannon Callows talk by Kathryn Finney from BirdWatch Ireland. Learn about the birdlife that lives in this stunning habitat. |
