Good morning! It's our last day together but it’s an important one. Today we will lead biodiversity walks at Ardan Wood, as we join forces with @repairactsireland to learn how our planned ancient woodland expansion constitutes repair of our natural and local heritage.
2. For now, we’ll tell you about some of our other environmental allies!
3. With several community-led groups striving for common environmental goals across Ireland, it’s important to recognise the benefits of #JoiningForces. We’re proud to have partnered with ReWild Wicklow across our sites in Wicklow since their establishment early this year.
4. From collecting seeds to planting trees and everything in between - there is little that perturbs these passionate rewilders!
5. This partnership has been key to launching their volunteer support programme, which sees their passionate environmental volunteers deployed across county Wicklow where they are needed most, on public, private and NGO land that is managed purely for nature.
6. We have partnered with @DublinFOE on multiple occasions on our volunteer days over the past year. Dublin Friends of the Earth consists of a group of volunteers working together to tackle climate chance and the biodiversity crisis.
7. @DublinFOE run monthly Zoom meetings, this is a great place to start if you would like to get involved.
8. On #JoiningForces, collaborations with experts such as Brian of @beesofireland allow us to expand our volunteering offering in hosting family-friendly environmental education events. It’s also great for when we come across UBOs on our reserves! (Unidentified Buzzing Objects)
9. While the NPWS has its work cut out as a driving force behind macro issues such as our island nation’s response to the biodiversity crisis, it is the often overlooked mundane or “every day” contributions from their dedicated staff nationwide that go unnoticed.
10. Contributions from the NPWS as simple as working with @nativewoodlandtrust to coordinate native seed collections in our most ancient woodlands
11. Or providing us with space to grow seeds collected, like our Wicklow nursery site, we could not do what we do without the support of the NPWS.
12. The @NativeWoodTrust also collaborate with Westmeath County Council and Waterford City Council in taking over the management of sites, protecting them and planting trees where appropriate.
13. The @NativeWoodTrust is a member of the Irish Environmental Network which is a network of individual environmental Non-Government Organisations.
14. In May we took part in the IEN-led Biodiversity Week and organised biodiversity walks at two of our sites. Funding from the IEN for these events allowed us to purchase a range of environmental education resources, including the all important magnifying glasses and hand lenses
15. We are setting up now for our event with @RepairActs at Ardan Wood. Do have a look at their website repairacts.ie to find out what they are all about.
16. We've just finished up with our day out with @RepairActs in Westmeath. We ran a woodland walk in Ardan Wood on the theme of the restoration we are carrying out there. We had a fabulous turn out! Thanks for involving us @RepairActs
17. We saw an abundance of amazing fungi on our walk today. There is so much deadwood around which is so important for the decomposing fungi.
18. We were invited to attend tree planting with @ForestsPocket this afternoon too as part of the @RepairActs Exhibition. This was a great example of how much planting can be done in a really small area and gives us hope for more space for woodlands in urban areas
19. That's might be all from us this week but that's certainly not the end of our story. You can keep up to date with us on Twitter @NativeWoodTrust, we are on Facebook and Instagram @NativeWoodlandTrust
20. If you are interested in getting hands-on, please send us an email to volunteers@nativewoodlandtrust.ie
21. If you would like to support us without having to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty, please consider joining as a member, which includes a quarterly magazine: nativewoodlandtrust.ie/membership/
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Good morning everyone. Happy Saturday to you all! To start off with this morning, I'd like to discuss our Blessington Reserve. This is a 16.5 acre site on the West side of the Wicklow mountains.
This time of year, it is jam-packed full of mushrooms, including ones that inhabit the above fallen Beech limb. This site has several Beech trees that are 100s of years old. Beech trees are naturalised in Ireland. We wouldn't plant Beech trees but are happy to let these remain.
As on all of our sites, we are leaving deadwood on our Blessington Reserve to benefit a wide range of organisms, such as insects, other arthropods and fungi. Standing deadwood can additionally benefit birds and bats.
Good morning everyone! Aisling here again from the Native Woodland Trust. Here I am with the gigantic King Oak in Tullamore, Co. Offaly. Are there any trees you love to visit?
2. Today I will be focusing on the work that our volunteers have been carrying out, some of the on-the-ground tasks that are involved and some of the boring behind-the-scenes stuff that needs to take place.
3. To start off with, I really want to say a huge, huge thank you to all of the volunteers that have joined us on volunteer days. Your time is so important to us, and you have achieved so much. We simply would not be able to do a fraction of our work without you all.
2. Some background first. FPMs are bivalve (shell in 2 halves) molluscs that are native to Irish rivers and lakes. The species is protected under the Wildlife Act and listed on Annex II and V of the EU #HabitatsDirective. npws.ie/research-proje…
3. It is on the verge of extinction, in unfavourable-bad conservation status and categorised as critically endangered in Ireland, and one of the 365 most endangered species in the world
Check out these #FreshwaterFactCards from @LeibnizIGB igb-berlin.de/en/freshwater-…
1. Good morning! Early start on Saturdays thread as it’s the weekend 😄 I’m going just do a quick thread today about Lough Furnace, which is the aquatic link between the Burrishoole catchment and the North Atlantic
2. This aquatic link runs from the Owenduff/Nephin and Bellacorick bog SACs, @WildNephin, down through Furnace and into Clew Bay SAC, very close to the shelf edge, so 🐟moving in and out of Furnace are essentially on a 🛣️between #Biodiversity hotspots @npwsBioData@MarineInst
3. The lake is actually a coastal lagoon, which is a rare, designated habitat (Code 1150). Some of you might be familiar with e.g. Loch Hyne and the salt lake near Clifden. Very detailed information from Brenda Healy on this habitat here from the 1990s: npws.ie/sites/default/…
1.Friday’s 🧵is all about Eels. The species we have in 🇮🇪 is Anguilla anguilla, the #EuropeanEel, not to be confused with other Anguilla species (such as the American eel), or indeed the mighty Congor eel (Congor congor). The photo is a bit blurred because....😱
2.European eel can be found in almost every stream and river in Europe, from the top of Norway, to the bottom of Spain, and also along the coast of North Africa
3. Eels are catadromous which means that they spawn in the sea, and then travel back to freshwater. (Anadromous species like salmon and trout spawn in freshwater before migrating to the sea) Thanks to Filipe Romão for this informative infographic
1. Good morning ☀️ Thursdays 🧵is about #Trout
For clarity, we are talking about Salmo trutta, the native trout to Ireland, which can be either resident (brown trout) or migratory (sea trout) or many things in between 📸 G. Rogan @WildTroutTrust@AST_Salmon@TheFSBI#FishSci
@TheFSBI 2. Trout display phenotypic plasticity. A phenotype is a set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism ➡️what does it look like and how does it function? Here’s various L. Melvin trout, thanks to A. Ferguson & P. Prodöhl @QUBelfast onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…
@TheFSBI@QUBelfast 3. For trout, the decision to stay put in freshwater, or migrate to sea is complex, governed by genetics, the condition of the fish, and environmental conditions. This is an excellent infographic also from Andy and Paulo @QUBelfast , + Tom Cross, @TomEReed & @mcginnity_p@uccBEES