One of the nicest side effects of slow living is that you get the chance to observe your surroundings in greater detail. When you’re cycling to work rather than flying past in a car, you can see all kinds of interesting wildlife in your local area.
If you enjoy a spot of wildlife watching — and the wealth of nature programmes like BBC’s Springwatch would suggest a lot of us do — it might be worth considering getting involved in some of the tracking and sighting projects that take place across the world.
Essentially, these projects are based on interactive maps, where you can add your own sightings of particular species.
Here are our current favourites:
The Butterfly Conservation is currently running a campaign to spot the Painted Lady butterfly or the Humming-bird Hawk-moth. All you need to do is add your pin to the map, along with details of your sighting. If you’re blessed with a beautiful garden, you shouldn’t have to look too far for examples.
UK Wasp Watch is an initiative by Rentokil, the pest control company, to track wasp sightings across the UK. Sometimes, species need to be tracked for the safety of humans too. This is a useful resource for tracking wasp nests, and the movement also has a charitable edge. For every sighting submitted, 20p is donated to The Anaphylaxis Campaign by Rentokil.
You can submit a sighting by using the hashtag #UKWaspWatch on twitter, submitting it through the form on Facebook, or by logging it straight onto the website.
If you live in Australia, you might want to check out the Whale Watching website, which regularly updates both its website and Twitter account with sightings of various whale breeds around the coast of New South Wales.
Residents of Southern New England can contribute their sea turtle trackings to this site. The great thing about this particular initiative is that it helps boaters locate areas where sea turtles have been spotted. Those areas can be avoided in future, reducing the chances of the turtles coming to harm.
Do you know of any great wildlife tracking initiatives? Let us know in the comments or on Twitter.
