Trust welcomes Chris Packham’s Bioblitz campaign

TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham is coming to Ben Lawers, a National Trust for Scotland National Nature Reserve, as part of the first independent audit of its kind in the UK involving Citizen Science. His goal is to highlight the extent to which the nation’s species are under threat.

On 14 July the whole campaign kicks off at Ben Lawers, the first of 48 sites across the country he’ll be stopping at as part of his UK Bioblitz – Nature Reserves are not Enough! campaign.

Chris’s UK Bioblitz campaign has a serious purpose, as the results of the 2018 audit will be recorded to create a benchmark. This will help measure the rise and fall in numbers of different species on these sites in the future.

He’ll start off in the Scottish Highlands on 14 July and from there, over the course of 10 days, he’ll weave his way across the UK, taking in Northern Ireland, Wales and parts of England along the route. All forms of life will be investigated in this snapshot of the country’s wildlife: from flies to fungi, mammals to moths, and birds to butterflies. At each site Chris and the UK Bioblitz team (which includes 100s of experts, young conservationists, film makers and people from all backgrounds and abilities) will be helped by species specialists and enthusiastic amateurs to pinpoint the winners and losers in the battle for Britain’s countryside.

The ultimate aim is to celebrate some conservation success stories, but also to flag up some of its failures.

Chris Packham comments: ‘I’m doing this because I want to highlight that the UK’s landscape is in big trouble. We should have a far greater expectation of having wildlife around us all of the time but sadly we find ourselves going to nature reserves.

‘We treat them like they’re museums and art galleries – we go there, we get fully satisfied there’s lots of life – but on the way home, when we’re driving through the countryside, there’s nothing left. Some parts of it are absolutely bereft, they’re deserts. What we want to do is say to people “that’s not good enough”. We want wildlife everywhere; nature reserves are not enough.’