Take a walk on the wild side and link with nature

If you get people interested in the environment they are more likely to be interested in protecting it,” says Lenny Antonelli of the Galway Branch of the Irish Wildlife Trust.

With that in mind the group organised a series of events last year ranging from beach safaris in Salthill to walks in Roundstone bog and the Burren National Park. And there are plans for even more this year, following a successful AGM of the Wildlife Trust in the city last week.Given that the Galway branch was only set up in late 2011 and hadn’t a cent to its name last year, the group, which is affiliated to the Irish Wildlife Trust, has been remarkably busy and productive.

There had been a Galway branch of the organisation some years ago, but it had been dormant for a while until this group, mostly graduates in Environmental Science and Marine Biology from NUI Galway re-established it, Lenny explains.

“The aim was to provide easy and accessible wildlife events that were free. So we decided to run an event every month and we succeeded in that, although it quietened down towards the end of the year.

“Our general mode of operation was to find someone with experience in a particular area and ask them to lead a walk,” explains Lenny, who is a graduate of Marine Science and Zoology in NUIG.

“I always had an interest in wildlife and I suppose being involved with the Wildlife Trust keeps that interest alive,” says the Trust’s PRO who also works as a freelance journalist, specialising in outdoor and environmental topics.

The Trust began the year with a couple of talks, including one by GMIT lecturer and freelance ecologist Cillian Roden who spoke about hidden nature in Galway.

“We focused on areas that people didn’t know about, because we are trying to avoid the obvious ones,” says Lenny. These places included a couple of oak woods in the Sliabh Aughty area between Galway and Clare, as well as turloughs in East Galway which host great bird wildlife during the winter.

“There is definitely a lot of wildlife out there that people are not aware of,” he says.

To help increase that awareness, the Galway branch of the Irish Wildlife Trust organised field trips to various parts of the county and city. These included a walk in Knockma, the wooded ‘fairy hill’ near Tuam, which was led by the local National Park and Wildlife Ranger. They also had two beachcombing safaris in Salthill, where the staff from the Aquarium lent their expertise. And on World Ocean Day, they had a stand at the Aquarium, outlining their work.

“The safaris were a great success and were so much fun, and the people from the Aquarium were great,” says Lenny. They’d bring down starfish and crabs in a bucket and let the children touch them.”For these outings, which attracted over 100 people each, the participants were supplied with nets to use on Grattan Beach at low tide when they lifted the rocks to see what lay in the pools beneath.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.