Eco Literacy

One of the key messages emerging from lockdown has been a heightened awareness – or perhaps renewed appreciation – of the importance and benefits of nature. Gardens, parks, walks along open spaces, even balconies to experience bird song or rooms with a view of woodland or hedgerows have all been embraced, with growing recognition that these are not just nice-to-have backdrops but something fundamental to our well-being – anchors in daily life that restore and revive us.

If this rings true for you, and you have also found nature to be a soothing and restorative presence, then there is an opportunity to repay some of this natural bounty, and even help it spread, through Wales Nature Week, starting at the end of May.

Wales Nature Week is an annual celebration of the often overlooked but nonetheless incredible habitats and species of Wales. Temperate rainforests, globally significant seabird populations, insects and spiders found nowhere else in the world – these are all on our doorstep, alongside species recently re-introduced or coming back from the brink such as beavers, pine martens and red squirrels.

Through its virtual programme, which includes a participative Garden BioBlitz, Wales Nature Week shines a light each day on different habitat types and the species they support. There will also be helpful tips and support from a community of experts for anyone curious to learn more, particularly about how we as individuals can give back to nature in our homes or workplaces.

As the amount of land left to wilderness and wildlife shrinks, our collective potential contribution to nature recovery, as citizens, homeowners and inhabitants of work premises, becomes increasingly important. We explore this, and other contributions that individuals and organisations can make to nature restoration, in our new training course, Nature Wise – Nabod Natur, which we will launch on World Environment Day on 5 June.

If you want to learn more about the links between human activity and ecosystem disruption and develop the knowledge to enable you and your organisation to take action for nature recovery, then we hope that this will be the course for you. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.

In the meantime however, for more insights into how anyone can take practical actions to help nature thrive, take a look at the Environmental Volunteering resource on our site and remember to sit back, recharge, re-energise and give back through logging in to Wales Nature Week.