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There's a feeling of spring in the air and our biodiversity team is well underway with its work on various habitats across Northern Ireland. Some of this is being written about on our blog.

Featured habitat this month is Seagrass Beds. Doesn't sound particularly exciting, but, if you live near one of our loughs, you probably see them every day - or at least some of the many thousands of Brent Geese that spend the winter here feeding on them.

Have you seen one of our priority species recently? Maybe a red squirrel? We would love to hear from you if you have. You can use our online form (reachable on each species page of our website) to let us know what you saw where and when.

Seagrass Beds
Seagrass beds occur mostly near sea loughs on shallow, sheltered sediments.

Seagrass itself needs nutrients and sunlight to grow. Their leaves are thin and long (like grass) and the beds can cover the whole sea floor.

Seagrass beds support a wide variety of different species of animals (one hectare may host up to 125 million small vertebrates and almost 10,000 fish).

Strangford Lough, Lough Foyle, Belfast Lough, Larne Lough, Killough Harbour, Carlingford Lough and Dundrum Bay support seagrass beds in Northern Ireland. These beds help prevent coastal erosion, produce oxygen and allow sediments to build up.

Five different species of seagrass grow in Northern Ireland’s seagrass beds: Zostera marina, Z. augustifolia, Z. noltii, Ruppia maritime and R. cirrhosa.
Read more about Seagrass Beds

A load of old rubbish!
A new project in an Antrim primary school got underway recently with children getting their hands dirty to improve their school grounds. Pupils in the Environmental Club at Parkhall Primary School got stuck in with their litter pickers to clean up rubbish discarded around the school.
Find out more about this

World Wetlands Day clean up
Our biodiversity team spent Valentine's Day 'loving our local nature reserve'! They carried out a litter pick at Canal Walk - a beautiful area of wet woodland on the shores of Lough Neagh at Toome.

The event was held to celebrate and raise awareness of World Wetlands Day, which is on 31 January. Unfortunately they couldn't go out on this day as it was the last day of the shooting season on Lough Neagh - guns going off might not have made for a relaxing time! So they opted for Valentine's Day instead.
Read this blog entry

Seeing Red at Gransha
The new squirrel feeders at Gransha Wood (one of our sites near L'Derry) have attracted some very hungry visitors recently. Red squirrels, sometimes three or four at once, have been seen regularly in the wood.
Take a look at 'our' squirrels

Have you seen one?
Talking of seeing red squirrels - have you seen one? Or an Irish hare or marsh fritillary butterfly. In fact, if you've seen any of our "priority species", we would like to know. You can tell us using a simple online form. This will help increase our understanding of the status and distribution of Northern Ireland's biodiversity.

In order to help any of our native plants and animals, we need to know exactly where they are. The Centre for Environmental Data and Recording (CEDaR) collects and stores this information for future use. We will be contributing to these records using the information you supply.
Let us know what you've seen

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