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Biodiversity Action Day

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On Friday the 20th of March we had our biodiversity action day. In the morning the junior school had a power point on biodiversity. They discovered what a flower needs to grow, water, carbon dioxide and sunlight. They also looked at the life cycle of animals, insects and plants. They looked at some food chains. They identified common birds in the school yard such as robin, blackbird, thrush, blue tit, chaffinch and goldfinch.

In the afternoon the senior school had their power point presentation on biodiversity. We learned that in Ireland there are 3 main habitats; grasslands, wetlands and woodlands. In our school we are very lucky to have two of those habitats woodlands and grasslands. These habitats support a wide variety of plants and animals. We learned that it is very important to promote indigenous species of both plant and animals. The frog was brought in by the Normans from France. The toad was brought to Kerry by boats and ships from Europe. The grey squirrel was brought from America. The native red squirrel began to decrease with the increase in the grey squirrel population. However, the pine marten began to eat the grey squirrel and by this he is protecting our native red squirrel. We learned that there are over 400 different types of birds in Ireland and there are over 800 different types of plants. The bees pollinate the flowers and plants and are essential for our food supply. Einstein said that if bees were to become extinct, life would cease to exist in 4 years.

We can promote biodiversity by planting a tree, a hedge, and planting wild flowers in a section of our garden. We can put a bird table, a bird bath, or a bat box in our garden. We could create a garden pond. It is important that we do not over fish our oceans, or over farm our land. It is very important that we do not cut down too many trees in our forests. We did a bug search in our organic garden and found a snail, woodlice, centipedes, millipede and worms.  We must protect our precious habitats and not destroy them.

On Tuesday the 24th March 5th class investigated our wooded area and identified trees and plants there. We identified all of the trees in our school environment by examining the twigs and shoots and we drew the twig, fruit and leaf of all of the trees we saw on our nature trail. We have beech sycamore, ash, blackthorn, hawthorn, rowan and Holm oak in our school grounds. We saw bramble, blackberry briars, snowberry, ivy and gorse on our trail. The wooded area is covered in a carpet of lesser celandine. We are lucky to have such biodiversity round our school

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