BioWet – Biological Diversity in Wetlands
This 34 month project, supported by the EU’s Erasmus programme, is led by the Norwegian Dokka Upper Secondary School, with four other project partners. These include WWT Martin Mere and the WLI initiative (UK), the Randsfjordsmuseum (Norway), EVOA at the Tagus Estuary (Portugal), and the Urdaibai Bird Centre (Basque Country, Spain).
The project aimed to develop a monitoring tool that allows students visiting wetland centres to collect and upload data, showing the impacts of climate change on local wetlands. The partners worked with their local and visiting school students to carry out survey work and develop guidelines for collecting data, as well as feeding into the design of a user-friendly web-based database that will display their information.
The project included visits to all four wetlands, working with students and teachers. Not only did it provide a useful source of information, but also give students a taste of what a career in environmental protection is really like. For more information, contact the head of WLI.
Draft protocol kit
In March 2019, the participants proposed a draft protocol. They got together at WWT Martin Mere for five days of discussion, observation, and field work. The kit comprises:
- the protocol: simple tables of what to study
- blank forms for your own observations
- a narrative report of the data collected at the first session, at Martin Mere in March 2019
- a chart for recording owl pellet analysis
- observations of bird survey by habitat
- observations (reedbed survey, birds, moths, owl pellet content) and invasive species lists
The participants will further refine the protocol though online meetings, before a pause in the surveys because of school exams. Schools and wetland centres not already part of BioWet are very welcome to download and use the protocol at their own local wetland centre. If that describes you, please contact WLI to help arrange the process!
BioWet Seminar, Dokka Delta, September 2021
In September 2021 the BioWet partners held a comprehensive seminar at the Dokka Wetland Centre, with interventions from national and local government, climate and biodiversity experts, and wetland conservationists from the initial BioWet participant countries. View on YouTube.
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