BirdWatch Ireland is the largest independent conservation organisation in the Republic of Ireland and is the official BirdLife International Partner in that country. A registered charity, its aim is the conservation of wild birds and their natural habitats. Established in 1968, it currently has over 15,000 members and supporters and a local network of 30 branches nationwide. It owns or manages a number of nature reserves which protect threatened habitats and the birds that rely on them, works to conserve Ireland’s biodiversity, produces a range of publications dealing with birds and nature conservation in Ireland, and carries out educational and survey work. For more details, visit www.birdwatchireland.ie.
Photo: Festival of fish
BirdWatch Ireland works to spread our conservation messages to school and university groups, as well to business guilds, active retirement associations and other community groups, and to foster an appreciation of birds and biodiversity to the general public. They work through the Irish Government’s Heritage in Schools scheme to provide bird conservation education in schools, and they have an annual teacher training programme that is run in conjunction with Dublin Zoo. BirdWatch Ireland publishes a dedicated children’s magazine called Bird Detectives which goes to all of our school, family and junior members. The organisation is heavily involved with BirdLife International’s Spring Alive project, which asks children across Europe, Africa and Central Asia to record the arrival of common migrants, and this has proven to be a great success in Ireland. They are currently running our nationwide ECO Education Appeal, which helps to fund our educational outreach work.
Photo: Making bird feeders and nest boxes at Phoenix Park Spring Alive stand
BirdWatch Ireland’s educational work to date has been very classroom-based, and one of the main reasons for our involvement with LLN is the opportunity it will afford the organisation to take children out of the classroom and to get them more involved in direct conservation actions. The national curriculum in Ireland lacks a significant wildlife and biodiversity conservation focus, and through LLN and the experiences of our fellow partners we hope to better link our outreach work with existing school requirements and also to inform and shape future school curricula as they develop. We also need to know more about teachers’ requirements in Ireland and to be able to produce effective teaching materials and lesson plans to enable them to impart conservation messages to children in a more effective way. Our resources and findings will be shared and developed with our LLN partners and hopefully also across the wider BirdLife International Partnership.
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