BioBlitz Bristol

Bristol’s first ever BioBlitz provided an opportunity for academics and volunteer naturalists to combine knowledge and expertise with public engagement experience to deliver an exciting biodiversity event for local people.

“A great way to get people learning about biodiversity by getting in amongst it”

Background

The Bristol Natural History Consortium (BNHC) is an alliance between the city's two universities and nine local wildlife organisations and agencies.  Building on the success of Bristol’s Festival of Nature, BNHC launched the South West’s first ever terrestrial BioBlitz event over two days in June 2009.  A tool for biodiversity exploration, education, and investigation, the Bristol BioBlitz was a 30-hour race against the clock event where scientists, naturalists, students, members of the public, schools and community groups worked together to find, identify and record as much wildlife as possible in the Ashton Court Estate.  The estate, on the edge of Bristol and North Somerset, covers 850 acres of woods and open grassland and contains a great variety of wildlife - the presence of rare woodland beetles earned the site SSSI status in 1998.  Free to all, the aims of the Bristol BioBlitz were threefold:

1. To find and identify as many different species as possible in a 30-hour period.
2. To collect useful records, to be used by the Bristol Environmental Records Centre, the National Biodiversity Network and local and regional park authorities.
3. To enthuse and engage the public with their local outside spaces, nature and wildlife recording.

The target audience was school children from Years 6–10 during Schools Day on the Friday, and local families and individuals on the Saturday.  The event was a great success: over 70 naturalists worked with 500 members of the public over the two days to find and log 637 unique species.

Delivery through Partnership

Funding from Science City Bristol, Defra and a charitable trust paid for a dedicated project manager for 80 days, 2 days/week from late September to the end of June, to put the event together.  In addition to staff time, other major costs were office overheads, marquee and generator hire, catering, security and marketing and printing.

In-kind and financial support was key to the delivery of the project.  Consortium members provided survey and media equipment and the City Council waived the event licensing fees.  In addition, other organisations were involved in the 'Discovery Tent', providing activities and information on other ways to get involved in wildlife ID and recording.  Volunteer recruitment and marketing of the event benefitted from the existing networks of Consortium members, who emailed relevant departments and organisations to encourage people (naturalists and volunteers alike) to attend.  Posters were displayed throughout Bristol and at the four universities in the area, and adverts were placed in local events listings and newsletters (e.g. Bristol Naturalists Society).

Event sponsors IOP Publishing created a dedicated logo to brand the event (from which information maps for the site, banners, posters and T-shirts for the volunteers were created).  The profile of the event was raised further through dedicated webpages linked to the main BioBlitz website.  New technologies were deployed to extend the reach of the engagement exercise across the web, which explored how to use different media for this new model to offer visitors more opportunities for interaction, and a quick updating mechanism.  The front page was linked to a free WordPress blog, an invaluable tool for reporting at the event on all the latest news, photos and tally.  This was linked in with Flickr and YouTube (both also free to use) to bring the event alive with photos and videos.

Sweeping for bugs - from the BioBlitz Flickr site.

The efforts of the media team - professional media representatives from a range of Bristol organisations – resulted in over 2,000 hits to the website over the 30 hours from across the world.  BRERC (the Bristol Regional Environmental Records Centre) created a modified database to verify and collate the data for the event.  Combined, this all ensured regular coverage of the activity as it unfolded across the different survey sites, with an up-to-date tally of species found and interest stories.

"Congratulations on an amazing event.  Everything went really smoothly and the people involved, equipment and enthusiasm were brilliant." Joe – BioBlitz Naturalist.

Highlights

The event created a fantastic team spirit amongst all those involved.  The scientists and naturalists valued being part of such an event, getting the chance to tell the public about their area of expertise and meeting like-minded people from across the UK.  The schools valued the opportunity for their students to take part in a genuine scientific survey and learn and be enthused about science and nature outside the classroom.  Offering free transport enabled students in a socio-economically deprived area to attend.  And when the clock was stopped, it was thrilling to announce that this team effort had discovered 569 different species in just 30 hours (final tally 637), including: great crested newts in the Estate's ponds; 79 moth species and eight species of bat found during dusk surveys; three types of orchid, and 55 species that had not been recorded in the Avon district before.  This information, carefully recorded by the BRERC, will help conserve the region's plant and animal life in future.

"The children and young people got to have some great outdoor experiences and the chance to get one to one with nature. And of course contribute to our tally of species. I feel we really enabled young people to engage who would have not otherwise thought twice about a shieldbug!" Ed – BioBlitz Naturalist

Evaluation

Informal internal evaluation: Naturalists and volunteer guides were asked to complete feedback forms or email their opinions on what worked well, what needed to be improved and other suggestions.
Formal external evaluation: A feedback form was completed by all participating schools.  Feedback from members of the public attending the event was obtained through face-to-face interviews conducted by a postgraduate from UWE.  In addition, an external evaluator was contracted to conduct 30 minute telephone interviews with the naturalists involved to obtain their views, suggestions and feedback on the event.

Recommendations

(source: BioBlitz Bristol 2009 Evaluation Report)

The volunteer naturalists who took part in the BioBlitz would do it again both for the scientific interest and for the chance to share their skills and knowledge with the wider public, particularly school students.  To get more academics to engage with this type of event, it could be promoted as a way of developing data collection and field skills that can be used in their teaching programme or academic research, as well as an opportunity to network with like-minded naturalists and other academics.  The scope of volunteer recruitment could also be widened to embrace PhD students, undergraduates and 6th formers.

James Buckley, a PhD student in the University's School of Biological Sciences, volunteered as a guide for the event.  For James, it was a great opportunity to sample the wonderful array of plants, animals, insects and birds across the estate.  "There are loads of things here that people probably never even think about," he said. "Looking at the variety of stuff that's on our doorstep is amazing!"

As a public engagement opportunity for academics, the BioBlitz offers experiential learning opportunities for engaging with local people.  However, the reasons more academics don’t get involved were perceived by those who took part to include: a lack of time, a lack of institutional or employer support, irrelevance to their own field of study and a fear of engaging with the public.  These barriers could be overcome by engaging academics in the event development process; creating an easier environment for academics to work in, and offering them a ‘backroom’ rather than public-facing role and briefing sessions with school groups beforehand.

"We are an inner-city, multicultural school in an area of high socio-economic deprivation. Many of our children rarely leave Eastville.  BioBlitz was therefore even more meaningful to our children as a learning experience. The event and activities were outstanding in terms of the quality resources, support staff and provision. We have been able to follow up the activities back at school by using your website and as an opportunity for numeracy and literacy. You have even inspired us to think about conducting our own BioBlitz in our school grounds next year!" - Stuart Albery, teacher at May Park Primary School, Bristol.

Future Plans

The BioBlitz was a completely new concept to all those involved in the event.  BioBlitz 2009 was an incredibly valuable pilot for organisational procedures, what to do and what not to do to run it more efficiently and effectively in the future.  With 2010 being the International Year of Biodiversity, BNHC are planning to link up with other BioBlitz events across the UK to create a high profile national programme.

Further information

You can find out more about this year's BioBlitz at the Bristol Natural History Consortium website.  The day's activity was also documented at the BioBlitz blog.

Contact

To find out more about the Bristol BioBlitz* or about setting up your own event, contact Berry Goddard at the Bristol Natural History Consortium.

* The BioBlitz name and concept is not registered, copyrighted, or trademarked; it is an idea that can be used, adapted, and modified by any group to freely use for their own purposes.