News from Biodiversity Ireland
May 2025

This monthly newsletter provides an update on some of the work of the National Biodiversity Data Centre and highlights upcoming events. 

Upcoming Biodiversity Training Events

📅 Social Wasps Identification Workshop - 4th July
      Brú na Bóinne, Netterville House,  Meath


Interested in testing your skills in the field? Join us for an Insect Field Day on 14th June, designed for experienced recorders and participants in monitoring schemes or previous workshops. For more information, please contact [email protected]

2025 Wild Bee Festivals

The Wild Bee Festival is an annual event coordinated by the National Biodiversity Data Centre aiming to raise awareness of Ireland’s pollinators and how to help them in local communities. The 2025 Wild Bee Festival will take place in Abbeyleix on the 21st and 22nd June in collaboration with Abbeyleix Tidy Towns and Laois County Council.

The 2025 festival will feature a series of walks and talks led by biodiversity experts and community groups on pollinators and the simple actions we can take to help them. Talks will include: ‘How Communities can Help Pollinators’, ‘Collecting Wildflower Seeds’, and guided walks of biodiversity areas led by Abbeyleix Tidy Towns. Following the success of the 2022 Wild Bee Festival in Skerries, and the 2023 Festival in Tralee, both have continued to run an annual festival and keep the buzz going. If you are on the east coast, the Skerries Wild Bee Festival is taking place from Friday 20th – Sunday 22nd June, and the Kerry Wild Bee Festival from Friday 4th – Sunday 6th July. Both festivals have a fantastic range of talks, walks, and workshops for pollinator enthusiasts of all ages and all levels of expertise.

New Courses

Managing Communities for Pollinators

To celebrate World Bee Day on the 20th May, the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan launched a free online course for community groups: Managing Communities for Pollinators.

This course is aimed at community groups who are interested in making their community pollinator friendly such as Tidy Towns, Keep Northern Ireland Beautiful, community gardens, residents’ associations, and youth groups. From pesticide alternatives to plant lists to pollinator-friendly mowing tips, this is a great resource for any community rural or urban, large or small.

Pollinator numbers are in decline on the island of Ireland, but records from the National Biodiversity Data Centre show that local populations are increasing where actions are being taken to help them. This is thanks to different sectors coming together to transform their landscapes for pollinators, not least community groups.

The new course draws on the guideline: ‘Local communities: actions to help pollinators’, providing clear, evidence-based actions for any community, whether just starting out or already doing work for biodiversity. Enroll for free here:

Farmland Pollinator-Friendly Hedgerows 

With Ireland believed to be the most hedge dense country in the world, the course as part of the All-Ireland Pollinator Plan, aims to make farmland more pollinator friendly, by helping farmers to understand what wild pollinators occur on their farm, and what evidence-based actions can be taken to make the agricultural landscape more pollinator and biodiversity friendly.

We hope the course will give farmers, farm advisors and agricultural students an insight into the value of native species-rich hedgerows on the farm and the many benefits they can provide, such as, shade and shelter for livestock, nutrient buffering to protect water quality, help with flood alleviation and field drainage and a refuge for beneficial insects, birds and pollinators. There’s a section on how to assess your existing hedgerows and find out which native plant species are present. The course also includes the management of existing hedgerows and how to restore and create new hedgerows.

New Resources

The National Biodiversity Data Centre is delighted to release a new guideline document for community groups who wish to produce a Community Biodiversity Action Plan for their local area. Community groups around the country are producing Community Biodiversity Action Plans to guide their biodiversity actions over 3-5 years. Almost 300 action plans have now been published on the dedicated portal, actionforbiodiversity.ie.

The aim of this new 36-page publication is to provide guidance to community groups new to working in this area, by offering a simple 7-step approach to producing a plan. Steps include forming a team to working with an ecologist and choosing appropriate actions. There is also a useful list of possible funding streams for community groups. The booklet was written by Juanita Browne, with assistance from Úna FitzPatrick.

In collaboration with the National Parks and Wildlife Service, the National Biodiversity Data Centre is delighted to publish an updated version of the Grasslands Trail booklet. The ‘Grasslands Trail’ is a network of public and private grasslands spread across the island. All of these sites are managed sensitively, with nature conservation and grassland diversity in mind. The Grasslands Trail began as a pilot initiative in 2023. The updated booklet expands the number of trail sites from nine to twenty-seven and includes a new section featuring farmland sites. The Grasslands Trail allows locals and visitors to gain a better understanding of endangered pasture and meadow habitats. For those sites that are publicly accessible, you can see and experience up close what great Irish grasslands look like.

Each site in the booklet has a profile to give you a flavour of that grassland, from orchids to rare breed cattle, from patches of meadow to vast areas of grassy habitats. The Grasslands Trail is a tour through the amazing diversity of some of Ireland’s semi-natural grasslands. Over time, we will continue to expand the trail, but for now, we hope you enjoy those highlighted.

The National Biodiversity Data Centre recently published a Handbook for the Irish Vegetation Classification. The Handbook is the culmination of years of collaboration between NPWS, the National Biodiversity Data Centre and BEC Consultants. It was written by Dr Philip Perrin in BEC Consultants, and launched by Minister Christopher O’Sullivan on the 2nd May.

Irish Vegetation Classification (IVC) classifies, describes and maps natural and semi-natural vegetation in Ireland within a single, unified framework. It is based on the statistical analysis of quantitative vegetation data from approximately 27,000 plots within the National Vegetation Database; and has been designed to be expandable and updatable. It can be viewed as a companion to the Fossitt classification system, to be used whenever more detailed study or evaluation of the vegetation is required. The IVC can inform the planning process, aid in the identification of protected habitats, facilitate the monitoring of vegetation, and provide a framework for ecological research.

The handbook is a compilation of useful information to assist getting the most out of the IVC. It forms part of a toolbox alongside associated software applications that can be found on the National Biodiversity Data Centre website. The development of the Irish Vegetation Classification and the publication of the Handbook has been funded by NPWS. The handbook is available to purchase through the National Biodiversity Data Centre online shop.