Experts are not able to go out and collect the data about wildlife because of the lockdown, how are they still managing to gain the unique information of the local wildlife?

During this lockdown period, people were stuck at home and had time to spend in their gardens. The ‘Blue campaign’ group, used this time for encouraging people to enjoy the wild spaces in their area through social media during the lockdown. This approach included encouraging adoption of the campaign’s recommendations: to leave 20-30% of grass to grow, followed by cutting remaining spaces either once or three times a year to encourage the natural establishment of wildflowers.

Gardens are one of the potent green spaces in urban areas as it can help connect the habitat. The leading national expert in bumblebee and pollinator ecology, prof Dave Goulson said, “if everyone makes their garden wildlife-friendly that would be very much beneficial. It is not going to solve the problem altogether, but it is a nice step in the right direction.”

According to Plantlife, Britain has 15 million gardens and can become one of the habitats to support the biodiversity by providing food to the pollinators. Prof Dave Goulson thinks that this is an interesting time as most people are at their home and spending more time in their garden. As people are paying more attention, they have started noticing butterflies and bees in their garden. It is crucial to make use of this time to make people more interested in their surroundings.

In this period ‘Blue campaign’ started to inspire people to leave part of their garden untidy for the wildlife. The group asked people to get involved with blue campaign gardens to record butterfly frequency and diversity within a set time to assess how the establishment of wild habitats (including wildflowers) affected pollinators compared to standard mown gardens. They took this step to tell people how they are helping to support biodiversity.

A conservation officer of Blue campaign, Betsy Gorman, believes that including garden owners and other people to record the butterflies at other green spaces within towns means that species are more supported in movement through classically hostile environments. Particularly the case with pollinators who are influenced by the landscape and local plant variation. “By including local people in these campaigns, there is an increased sense of ownership in the environment outside their doorstep,” she said.

Involving people and telling them how their small change in the garden can support biodiversity even in a small area is essential. Betsy Gorman said, “I feel that citizen science is a valuable and crucial part not just in scientific assessment but also creating the rewilding connectivity that we need in urban spaces.”

Besty said that she could not visit the rewilded places personally and had to take gardeners’ help turned out to be beneficial. It allowed more people to get ‘practically’ involved in data collection and try out new techniques in species recording and appreciate the biodiversity in a wild space.

She said that the ‘Blue campaign’ as a whole is a citizen science effort as it drives participation in rewilding from the bottom-up, i.e. a grassroots movement. The campaign had created a platform where they could share the reasoning behind passive rewilding for biodiversity. As people shared more photos and information on social media, it helps to encourage other citizens.

Betsy thinks that utilising council-owned land and school grounds increases the connectivity between wild habitats, in urban spaces. Therefore, it is crucial to encourage councils and schools to promotes habitat heterogeneity. Betsy said that councils and garden owners approached the campaign more frequently for tips and network establishment during a lockdown.

Dave said it is necessary to create a network of pollinator-friendly habitat, across the country. Be that gardens, roadside verges or farming fields. “We need to change the way we manage the landscape because we have made most of it hostile to life,” he said.

Blue campaign is also working with schools to create opportunities for pollinators, small mammals, reptiles, and species higher up the food chain. “it also gives the opportunity for school children to develop scientific observation skills early on” she added.

Sophie also feels that teaching children about biodiversity at an early stage is vital if we want the next generation to have a good connection with nature. “They are more likely to conserve it if they know why it is there,” she said.

According to Dave Goulson, the most important thing is that the citizen science approach engages people with nature, giving them a reason to look around in the surroundings and observe the wildlife.

Natural heritage officer of Shetland Amenity Trust, Paul Harvey did the same thing. He asked people to engage with the wildflowers in their nearby places. He asked people to take photos of the flower with the location where they saw that species. Using this approach, he is trying to know the local flora and get people involved to conserve it.

During this challenging time, the Trust took help from the citizens by making them interested in the wildflowers and making them aware of preserving their natural heritage. He believes a citizen science approach can be very successful in making positive changes. “Focus of this citizen science approach during the lockdown was to make people look at their garden and notice the wildlife in their immediate environment to know its importance”, said Paul.

By giving an example of a butterfly monitoring scheme Dave Goulson said that the project is running since the 1970s, he said it is almost entirely based on the amateurs and is one of the successful projects. He said, “if you can harness the enthusiasm of thousands of amateurs, potentially you can do much bigger studies, collect much more data.”

Paul said, “The more awareness out there, the more you are going to influence the decision-makers, which in turn help with the conservation. Along with that, it helps with the mental health as people go outside and engage in new things, it also makes them aware and might even encourage them to join the campaign or organisation for the cause.”

According to Paul, it could happen in a citizen science project that some part of the collected data is not that useful, but many times, citizens’ data play a crucial role in the project. He believes that by using the citizen science approach, they get unique data and at the same time make people interested in the subject, which is more important.

Dave said that most people don’t care and do not realize the importance of the environment. It is crucial to make people aware of things to protect them. “If people don’t know something exists, they are not going to care about it,” he added.