On the lead up to World Environment Day, Dedicated students fromKingston University joined up to help clear Himalayan balsam Impatiens glandulifera – conducting a balsam bash on the banks of the Hogsmill River.
Kingston University Biodiversity Action Group
22-05-2014: International Day for Biological Diversity 2014!
Help celebrate the International Day for Biological
Diversity. The focus for 2014 is Island Biodiversity.
Here are some interesting facts and figures about the importance of island biodiversity:
Headlines:
"One third of the world’s countries are islands"
"Islands constitute less than 5% of the Earth's landmass; yet, islands provide habitat for 20% of all bird, reptile and plant species"
"Islands also harbour more than 50% of the world’s known
marine biodiversity"
"Islands have higher extinction rates then mainland areas due
to the vulnerability of their endemic flora and fauna, combined with intensive
human use of islands"
"64% of all recorded extinctions in the last century happened
on islands"
16-05-2014: Of eels and algae
Wednesday was a day for exploring the river, the lovely
weather had the clouds of insects flying over the Hogsmill and the surrounding bridges
for the majority of the day and students out in force enjoying the weather.
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Joe explains how to wrangle small eels for monitoring
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09-05-2014: Meeting the Sopranos
Students, staff and
local residents visited Seething Wells halls of residence on a bat walk with
local ecologist Alison Fure from the London Bat Group to see what we might see and hear feeding in the skies
around the halls on a Friday night.
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| Molly listens for bats through a detector |
01-05-2014: Monitoring the Hogsmill with a little help from our riverine friends
We started April in the river planting up the new
renaturalised bank by knights Park, and we've ended the month learning to
monitor the state of the Hogsmill and the species in it with a little help from
our riverine friends and the team at ZSL.
02-03-2014: Hogsmill River transformed into wetland wonderland!
Volunteers turned out in force to see the culmination of our Hogsmill habitat improvement project at our Knights Park campus. Today's task was to plant up the new riverbank areas with marginal plants ready to take advantage of the spring warmth.
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| Iaroslava cradles her little plant bundles of joy! |
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