1 minute read
The power of nature notebooks
Small observations, big impact on wildlife
Joanna Foat shares why she believes we should all have a nature notebook to aid in our efforts to protect wildlife.
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Many renowned botanists, like Ellen Hutchins – Ireland’s first female botanist – began their passion for nature with a simple notebook. Hutchins famously spent five days admiring a piece of seaweed, carefully preserving fragments and sketching her ‘li le beauties’ of mosses and lichens. The eminent Francis Rose’s field notebooks are all we have as records for some of the rarest of British lichens historically.
Early records of flora and fauna like these in notebooks across the UK have laid the groundwork for The Wildlife Trusts in protecting nature reserves since 1912. As we face the dual nature and climate crises, collecting data on wildlife is more critical than ever. These precious sightings not only inform conservation projects but also, eventually, government policies.
Nigel Doar, Head of Research at The Wildlife Trusts, highlights the need to engage more people of all ages in recording wildlife. Not everyone, he notes, starts with a vast knowledge of species.
He recalls his own challenges as a student identifying an oak tree in a hedgerow, a process akin to spot-the-difference. Conservationists use a classification system of taxonomic units – essentially the identification of shared characteristics – to help them work out the species or family of species of a particular plant or animal.
