Blogs

This year’s City Nature Challenge is no longer a competition. Instead, we want to embrace the collaborative aspect of sharing observations online with a digital community. In these challenging times, being outdoors and connecting with nature is a safe and responsible way to cope with stress. City Nature Challenge allows people to come together and collaborate around the world, participating in whatever ways they can, to document the biodiversity of our planet. 

I was about to leave behind a life of employment, a “proper job” in environmental consulting and go back to university (again) to begin studying my PhD. I liked studying invertebrates, perhaps one of three students from my undergraduate degree that did. Initially, I had been studying bees, starting out self-taught and then attending 2 FSC courses to learn more. With the growing nerves at the thought of my impending PhD, I applied for the Tomorrow’s Invertebrate Recorder course, I needed to brush up on my ID and learn something more than bees. I had never really been taught anything entomological, aside from on FSC courses, so a week of invertebrate inspired learning, and meet like-minded enthusiasts sounded great. Read more...

Guest blog by Emily Seccombe. Emily is the Mentoring Officer for ‘A Focus on Nature’ (AFON),  the UK's youth nature network. They are a voluntary organisation led by young people and aim to connect, support and inspire young people with an interest in nature and conservation and provide a voice for the youth conservation movement.  AFON run a mentoring scheme for young people aspiring to work in or already working in conservation, linking them with professionals who can provide support and guidance through their careers. 

I’m Charlie and I work for The Royal Parks on Mission: Invertebrate, a project supported by players of People’s Postcode Lottery that aims to help discover, celebrate and protect the invertebrates that call the parks their home. Invertebrates have always fascinated me - I am always keen to discover more about them. And what’s great about these species is that there are always so many new things to unearth! This is how volunteering, recording centres, and BioLinks courses have benefitted me.

The Easter holidays are fast approaching so to celebrate we've got some amazing offers on selected publications with up to 35% off online orders until 14 April 2020.

Find out more about the FSC Easter Sale!

I won a place on the "Tomorrow's Invertebrate Recorders" course - a week long residential programme for young people run by the FSC BioLinks project  and A Focus On Nature providing an introduction to surveying invertebrates. When I reflected upon the abundance of experiences and skills I’d gained during ​Tomorrow’s  Invertebrate Recorders, ​I was surprised to note how valuable the week had been from a social  perspective. 

Are you a nature enthusiast? Do you have experience in species identification and wildlife surveys? Would you like the opportunity to visit protected sites, contribute to TVERC’s records, and play a role in the success of the Berkshire Local Wildlife Sites Project? You may be able to help us with survey work!

During my first FSC course, I attended a workshop identifying Wasps. After being well and truly bitten by the entomology bug, I attended some more courses and not long after I bought myself a microscope and felt confident enough to carry out my own surveys. I was then asked to start assisting the teaching of some FSC BioLinks courses and later won a place on one of their week long residential courses for young people, the "Tomorrows Invertebrate Recorders" . Read more about how the FSC and the FSC BioLinks project has helped me...

I work for the Jersey Biodiversity Centre as the Education and Outreach Officer.  I won a place on the "Tomorrow's Invertebrate Recorders" course - a week long residential programme for young people (aged 18-25) run by the FSC BioLinks project and A Focus On Nature, providing an introduction to surveying invertebrates. It was amazing and rewarding to meet other invertebrate enthusiasts, and on returning home I had heaps of energy and enthusiasm to inspire more recorders.

It’s lovely to be proved wrong sometimes. FSC BioLinks Project Officer, Charlie Bell, approached her recent Project Management for Wildlife Conservation training course with a fair bit of trepidation.  How could group training sessions possibly work well online? And would the course actually be useful in the ‘real world’? (Spoiler: it really is useful!) Find out more in this review.