Some events of interest coming up in the month of May!

Jamestown Nature Reserve Workshops in May
Jamestown Nature Reserve, Oylegate hosts a series of workshops in the months ahead.

• Saturday 3rd May “Growing Food and Making the Best Use of Space” presented by Trevor Sargent.
• Saturday 10th May. Mary Bulfin presents “Learning About Wild Food Foraging”.
• Thursday 15th May you can take a walk on the wild side at “Wildflowers for Beginners & Improvers” with Zoe Devlin.

For further info contact Will Warham @ 087 2052266 or see Jamestown Nature Reserve

National Walk to School Week May 12th to 16th
National Walk to School Week: May 12th to 16th 2014 will see students from Green-Schools all over Ireland coming together to show their support for a greener, healthier environment by encouraging pupils, parents and teachers to walk to school wherever possible during National Walk to School Week and promoting walking and other sustainable travel modes to school.

Biodiversity Week 2013
Celebrate Ireland’s unique nature and wildlife during National Biodiversity Week, 17 to 25 May! There are dozens of free and exciting events happening around Ireland.

European Neighbours Day – Fri, 30 May, 2014
Wexford celebrates European Neighbours Day with a tea/coffee morning at Redmond Park. This event has proved hugely popular over the past number of years with local residents and friends of Redmond Park.

In Other News…
Our friends at Ballygarrett Tidy Towns have been doing Trojan work in keeping their village looking in tip-top shape. Following the release of the film The Sea (written by John Banville), which was part-filmed in the area, Ballygarrett can expect to attract loads of curious visitors both to the bean and to nearby Oldbawn Beach. Ballygarrett Tidy Towns meets 7pm every Tuesday and Thursday at the church carpark.

Well done also to The Mercy School, John’s Road, Wexford on being awarded by An Taisce with its 7th Green Flag (Biodiversity)

We also would like to say well done to the residents of Piercestown who got together and decided to clean up their Parish Collecting over 100 bags of rubbish well done to all involved. See some photos of the cleanup here.

Invasive species are non-native species that, as a result of human activity, have been transported further than they could naturally travel and have subsequently disrupted their newly colonised environments. Biological invasions happen when an organism arrives at a place beyond its previous range.

Invasive species are now considered to be one of the greatest threats to biodiversity on a global scale. And they are in Wexford! There is presently a campaign underway to tackle the scourge of Japanese Knotweed in Wexford.

This talk in the Riverbank House Hotel, Wexford on Sept 19 (8pm) will give you a good introduction to the whole subject of invasive species and how we can best deal with them.

If you feel like swotting up before then have a look at this online brochure prepared by Niamh Lennon, Biodiversity Officer with Wexford County Council: Invasive Species.

As with many of the important things in life, the future of Biodiversity is in the hands of the next generation.

To this end, a “Biodiversity Action Day” was organized recently in Scoil Mhuire, Coolcotts, Wexford, where Mary Foley, from Wexford County Council’s Environment Department passed on some of her vast Biodiversity knowledge to a bunch of keen and enthusiastic youngsters.

Mary introduced a number of fun projects, and there were many wonderful paintings and sculptures of plants and animals created by the young participants.

34 people took part in the Wexford Naturalists’ Field Club’s Biodiversity Day walk around part of Wexford town. The highlight of the walk was the discovery, by one of our members, of a Swift nest in the wall at the front of the Borough Co. buildings. Now that we know that swifts are nesting in the vicinity the swift nest boxes, erected on the Old Jail, may be occupied sooner rather than later.