Thank you to everyone who took part in our photo competition. It wasn’t easy to choose a winner from all the fantastic entries, but our judge, Chris George, eventually chose this brilliant capture, taken by Vicky Gill as the winner.

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Waitrose donate to charities and not for profit organisations every quarter with their community matters project. This quarter Waitrose aim is to help Environmental Projects.

On the 27 of October Waitrose donated £350 to the LSG Bat Group. 

Charles Hurford, Sally Pedlar from the Bat section and little Arthur in his bat suit were donated the cheque by Vanessa Gillease from Community Matters, Waitrose and Partners Admiral Park. Vanessa said “we are happy to donate the money to the bat section because bats always seem to get overlooked”

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Cattle grazing has returned to the Icart headland for the first time in almost 100 years.

La Société Guernesiaise Conservation Herd’s latest assignment is grazing the headland at Icart.

The States-owned Icart field has been undergoing habitat restoration since 2017 as part of a project run by Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services (ACLMS) in an effort to encourage a wide range of plants, insects and birds to thrive.

“It is amazing to see the ongoing rejuvenation of the site in such a short space of time,” said a spokesman for the department. “Since the clearance of some scrub and bracken, native wildflowers in the existing seedbank have flourished.”

Manager of La Société Guernesiaise Conservation Herd, Dave Bartram, commented: “Grazing will return the area to a wildflower rich grassland by keeping scrub from establishing and creating a diverse glassland sward, whilst their dung is a great food source for many invertebrates.”

The cattle will be grazing for several weeks and is being checked daily by the team that cares for them.

See the article here: https://gsy.bailiwickexpress.com/gsy/news/why-use-mower-when-you-can-use-mooer/#.YXpcS57MKUm

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The post Grab a crab for La Societe’s coastal survey appeared first on La Societe Guernesiaise.

Clare has extensive marine conservation experience, having volunteered for the Cornwall Wildlife Trust, the Marine Biological Association, and the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, as well as several other organisations. More recently, Clare has become involved in the Bailiwick Eelgrass Exploration Project here in Guernsey, and she is planning to undertake her own research project on the island’s seagrass habitats.

Seagrasses provide several important functions including: blue carbon capture and storage, reducing coastal erosion, and acting as a nursery ground for important commercial fish species and other protected species such as seahorses.

“It is essential to gain a full understanding of seagrass presence, location and composition in Guernsey, which is currently lacking. This small research project has the potential to make a huge impact on the local environment, for instance in advising marine spatial planning. The aim of my research project is to map the extent and biodiversity of eelgrass beds in Guernsey, and extending the project to collect more data from the other islands would be my ambition.”

We also have an update from Charlotte Burgoine, last year’s bursary winner. Charlotte’s final year dissertation research was on the impacts of hedge-cutting on biodiversity in Guernsey, and we were delighted to hear that she was the overall winner of the Sparsholt University Dissertation Poster Competition. We look forward to welcoming Charlotte to the Frossard Theatre to learn more about her research.

Details of the 2022 bursary will be released early next year.

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The Bailiwick Bat Survey is a citizen science project which offers anyone in the Bailiwick of Guernsey the opportunity to borrow automated equipment to record our local bats using methods devised by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). The BTO have run similar surveys successfully in the UK and this project aims to collect data to improve our understanding of the status and distribution of different bat species across the islands.

This exciting initiative has been commissioned by Agriculture, Countryside and Land Management Services as part of the implementation of the Strategy for Nature. The BTO is providing the technical know how and La Société aims to work with and inspire a large section of the wider community to connect and engage with an aspect of nature that is poorly known and understood. Using citizen science in this way, we will help raise awareness of what bats do for us and why it is important to conserve them.

Alderney Wildlife Trust, Sark School, Guernsey Museum at Candie, Guille-Allès Library, and the Guernsey Biological Records Centre (GBRC) have all volunteered to be ‘Bat Centres’. Each bat centre holds the detectors and associated equipment. Volunteers can borrow a bat detector kit with all the instructions and equipment required to take part in the survey.

Volunteers are asked to pick a square (measuring 500 x 500 metres) from an online map, and to place a static bat detector in typical habitat in their chosen square (measuring 500 x 500 metres) from an online map, and to place a static bat detector in typical habitat in their chosen square for a four-night period twice per year, once between now and mid-July, and then again to record at the same location between mid-July and the end of the October. The bat detector automatically records bat calls to a memory card every time a bat passes throughout a night. After four nights’ recording, volunteers are then able to upload their recordings to our website, return the detector kit, and our automated sound analysis will identify each sound recording to species and send you the results within hours! As a bonus, the analysis will also identify sounds made by bush crickets and small mammals. The survey season runs from early April until the end of October, so there is plenty of time to take part. Anyone can get involved – you do not need to be a bat expert! 

Speaking about the project, Donna Francis, President of La Société, commented “La Société is delighted to be co-ordinating this project which will provide vital data, enabling informed decisions to be made around the protection of our bat populations.  Being a top predator of nocturnal insects; the data will also provide an indication of habitat biodiversity.”

The success of this project is dependent on volunteer participation. If you are interested in taking part, please head to www.biologicalrecordscentre.gov.gg/our-projects/bbs to find out more, and to reserve a 500-m square (or more) to survey. If you have any queries about the Bailiwick Bat Survey project or equipment, please email the co-ordinator at batsurvey@biologicalrecordscentre.gov.gg.

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The Junior Membership is an opportunity for young people to get involved in La Société activities and learn fantastic facts while having a great time.

La Société will be offering at least one event per month throughout the year for their junior members partnering with their various Sections and other organisations. As well as this an additional junior archaeology event will be held each month. All junior activities are free to children of La Société members.

The Education Officers are currently planning two spring-themed family events during the Easter holidays; a wildflower walk with special guest Raymond Evison OBE takes place on Saturday 10th April at Fort Doyle and a bird-spotting walk at L’Eree on Thursday 15th April.

Forthcoming events include collaborations with the Pollinator Project on Saturday 22nd May and with the Clean Earth Trust on 5th June, prior to World Oceans Day.

Sarah Allez, Education Conservation Officer, commented “We are really excited to be resuming our junior events and have a great programme lined up for the rest of the year. We want our events to be as varied as possible, so our juniors are introduced to a wide variety of topics about nature, the environment and conservation. The activities range from rock pooling and crab surveying to stargazing and making sundials as well as undertaking bat walks and making bug hotels from recycled materials.

For further information on these events or on junior membership, please contact Sarah Allez
at eca@societe.org.gg

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Four local charities, groups and organisations have been chosen as recipients of Guernsey Electricity’s first Power to the People Fund, with La Societe’s Education Officers and Bat Section being two of the successful applicants.

The fund, which was launched in November 2020, has been developed for individuals and charity organisations wishing to engage in projects that benefit the environment and local community. Guernsey Electricity are donating a total of £6,000 twice a year to projects that are aligned with their four pillars of  2020-2025 Environmental Sustainability Strategy which in turn contribute towards the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

In total, 17 separate submissions were made with the Clean Earth Trust, Lihou Charitable Trust and La Société Guernesiaise’s bat section and its education officers all successful in their bids for funding. 

La Société Guernesiaise’s Bat Section will utilise its £2,000 donation to purchase bat boxes to put up around the island and also bat detectors for use on its regular bat walks which are open to the public.  Education officers at La Société have received £1,000 to go towards equipment as part of its schools’ workshops, which focuses on educating students on biodiversity and nature.  

Full article can be found at on Guernsey Electricity’s website.

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In an effort to better understand the loss of the night sky due to light pollution, astronomers are calling on star-lovers and romantics to enjoy a night under the stars and give them a helping hand, you can become a scientist for the night. This is a great activity for the whole family that you can do from home, whether you live under dark skies or in a town with lots of light pollution.

This year, the campaign runs from 6th February to 14th February.

Participants are asked to count the number of stars they can see in a quadrangle formed by the brightest stars in the constellation of Orion. It is very easy to find in the night sky, with the four brightest stars being the intensely red/orange coloured Betelgeuse (some of you might know this star as Beetle-Juice), Bellatrix (a name Harry Potter fans will recognise), Rigel (the brightest star in Orion that scientists think may be up to 300,000 times brighter than our sun!) and Saiph (about 60,000 times brighter than our sun).

Of the four stars, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Saiph are so large that they will end their lives in a gigantic explosion, called a supernova. These explosions throw elements out into space from which new solar systems, like ours, are formed. Bellatrix will have a more sedate end, becoming a beautiful planetary nebula, as will our own sun, with a white dwarf star in the centre.

If you would like to participate here are the details for the project:

https://www.cpre.org.uk/what-we-care-about/nature-and-landscapes/dark-skies/star-count-2021/

In addition, you can also email your results to astronomy.gg@cwgsy.net and we can produce a local light pollution map.

Why is looking at light pollution important?
Most people are familiar with air, water and land pollution but are not always conscious of light being a contaminant. At night time many of us have become very familiar and comfortable with artificial lighting. At the Astronomical Observatory in St Peters one of the most frequent comments we hear from visitors is “I have never seen the Milky Way before” It takes people by surprise, the night sky to so many visitors is just a diffuse orange glow. Telling them they are looking into the very core of our galaxy, some 100,000 light years away leaves quite an impression.

Light pollution has many hidden effects, it interferes with normal circadian rhythms, impacting human health and immune function. It adversely impacts behaviour in insects and animals. Unnecessary light pollution also wastes energy which is expensive and it contributes to climate change.

Other objects to look at:
Also look to the right and up a little and you will see the red planet Mars. If you look to the left and down a little you will see the brightest star in the night sky, Sirius. If you watch it for a few minutes it will appear to flash in many different colours from blue-white-yellow-red. The atmosphere splits the starlight into these different colours, much like a rainbow. Also, look at the central lower half of the Orion constellation, you might see a “fuzzy patch”. This is the Orion Nebula, a mixture of space dust and gas where new stars and solar systems are being formed, if you have a pair of binoculars you will clearly see the nebula and its bright centre, illuminated by a group of stars called the Trapezium Cluster.

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The Island is back in lockdown meaning we are at home more than normal.  Your exercise slot can be a brilliant time to find out more about the nature in our Island. La Société is pleased to launch a new initiative “A Look at Lockdown”.

It’s simple – when you are out on a walk, have a look around; there’s wildlife wherever you look, and we are seeing a lot more of it with less vehicles on the roads. Take a snapshot of what our wildlife is up to and send it to us.

As well as building a visual gallery, we can also use this to work with the Biological Record Centre by producing a huge amount of data about the wildlife we see. Often, it is the common species that do not always get noticed such as robins and gulls, but it is just as important to know how these species are doing as it is for uncommon visitors.

To get involved send your photographs to Communications@societe.org.gg by Sunday 28^th February, and include:

• Name of photographer
• Subject
• Location (as accurate as possible would be great!)
• Date photograph was taken

Once this has been received, the photographs will be featured on www.societe.org.gg and the data submitted to www.biologicalrecordscentre.gov.gg. The online Gallery will be revealed on Monday 8^th March.

***UPDATE 16/02/2021***

***IMPORTANT***

Please ensure that when you are taking photographs to be respectful, and not to disturb wildlife. We have got some fantastic natural areas for all to enjoy and hope that this project can be used as an enabler to get out and see what our nature has to offer.

Please follow States of Guernsey guidelines, leaving your house only for daily exercise, maintain social distancing and wear facial coverings where required.

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