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Scottish Dragon Finder – A success story

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The end of the Scottish Dragon Finder project is now upon us and the last four and a half years have been filled with many activities seeing tens of thousands of people throughout Scotland learning more about amphibians and reptiles and volunteering their time to help our species.  The Scottish Dragon Finder team ran over 250 sessions engaging over 33,000 people throughout the project.  Also 70 habitats were created or restored as part of the project.  Scottish Dragon Finder impacted far and wide across Scotland working across 31 of the 32 council areas.

On the 9th June a talk on Scottish Dragon Finder was given at the Glasgow Science Festival Conference (Amphibians and Reptiles of Scotland: current research and future challenges) at the University of Glasgow.  The conference was well attended in Glasgow’s tropical weather conditions and the talk, providing an overview of the project, was well received with positive feedback.

Staff completed site visits to the final 10 sites across Scotland, gathering data on the ponds and checking their condition before finishing our reports.  Aerial footage was recorded at many of the sites too which can be put together soon to see the ponds from a different perspective.

Views of some of the Scottish Dragon Finder project sites – (from top, clockwise) Alyth Community Woodland (Perth and Kinross), Dunnet Forest (Highland) and Auchnacraig Forest Park (West Dunbartonshire)

Our last event took place at Rouken Glen Park in East Renfrewshire as part of World Environment Day.  Along with East Renfrewshire staff and other charities, Scottish Dragon Finder hosted a stall and ran pond-dipping at the park’s pond with many enthusiastic families!

Many thanks to our funder, Heritage Lottery Fund, for funding Scottish Dragon Finder and all the other funders who contributed towards the project’s successes.  A big thanks to all those who volunteered their time on Scottish Dragon Finder, helping us accomplish so much since 2014.

Scottish Dragon Finder celebrates its first birthday!

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sdf1Froglife’s Scottish Dragon Finder project is now one year old and we’ve had such an amazing year of highlights all over Scotland.

We have hosted a huge variety of different events across Scotland. Our Dragon Tails sessions have involved schools and youth groups across Edinburgh, Aberdeenshire, Fife and the Scottish Borders, and we have also been lucky enough to visit groups in Orkney and Stornoway! Dragon Tails introduces children to amphibians and reptiles through fun activities and aims to inspire an interest and understanding in our species. We worked with the Turriff Girlguides earlier this year to perform an amazing amphibian play showing the adventures of Frankie, a young frog on his way to paradise pond.

sdf2Our Dragons in your Garden sessions have been a great success this year, going out to allotments and community gardens in locations including Stirling, Perth, Ayrshire and Glasgow. Groups have kindly hosted us whilst we offer advice to gardeners on how to make their spaces more wildlife friendly, as well as actively helping groups to enhance their gardens. For one of our sessions, we had a fantastic day with Green Routes in Stirling building a bog garden and were fortunate to try some of their home-made frog cake!

sdf3Dragons on the Move is Froglife’s roadshow event, where the team travels to venues across Scotland to run talks, walks, crafts and wildlife activities such as pond-dipping and reptile rummages, offering free experiences to local people. We’ve had some great days out this year running group sessions at the Dundee Science Festival and engaging with families at Pollok Country Park in Glasgow. Also seeing the beautiful landscapes of Dunnet and Inverewe Estate in the Highlands and meeting so many enthusiastic locals.

If all this wasn’t enough, the Scottish Dragon Finder project has been busy restoring and creating ponds in Perth and Kinross, Angus and the Highlands. So far, we’ve had major works to create complexes of ponds with dipping platforms, construct natively vegetated pond embankments and create more open water at older ponds where plants had taken over. These works have been received with enthusiasm from local people and will offer fantastic areas for frogs, toads and newts to lay eggs and take shelter in the future. The real highlight has been the achievements of Froglife’s and local groups volunteers who have donated their time and energy to improve new ponds with native plants for amphibians, clear trees from shady ponds and create hibernacula for wildlife sheltering in the winter amongst many other activities!

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Our Scottish Dragon Finder project officer, James Stead, added “It’s been a fantastic first year of the Scottish Dragon Finder project and it’s great that the activities take us all across Scotland including the Scottish islands. This allows us to meet many families, children and groups eager to get involved – we’re all set to have the success continue into the second year and beyond!”

HLF logoThe Scottish Dragon Finder project is a 4.5 year project funded by Heritage Lottery Fund and working with a host of other partners / organisations. Find out more about Scottish Dragon Finder here

 

Get Creative For Frogs’ Sake!

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FrogletIn a change to our normal timetable this weeks Croaking Science has been replaced by this croak about Save the Frogs Day.  Croaking Science will be back on 14th May.

We are joining an international community coming together on Saturday 26th April to celebrate Save the Frogs Day!  A day dedicated to raising awareness about the plight of the world’s amphibian species: frogs, toads, newts, salamanders, and caecilians. You can become part of worldwide efforts to help save our incredible amphibian friends by joining us at the WWT London Wetland Centre, London and Kelvingrove Park & Museum, Glasgow for interactive demonstrations, crafts and pond dipping.  These events form part of Froglife’s Dragon Finder Projects in London and Scotland which are funded by Heritage Lottery Fund grants, of £472,500  and £422,400 respectively.

Data compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) revealed that of the approximately 7000 amphibian species found around the world nearly a third were threatened with extinction, and more recent evidence suggests that this may have increased to 41%. More shockingly still, since 1980 nearly 200 species of amphibian have already become extinct! Save the Frogs Day aims to improve the prospects of our froggy friends by raising awareness of this dramatic decline and to inspire people into action to help conserve this amazingly diverse group of animals.

STFD logoSave the Frogs Day was founded in 2008 by American ecologist Dr Kerry Kriger who was alarmed by the lack of public awareness in regards to amphibian decline. The Save the Frogs website quotes Kriger saying “Our vision is a world in which not a single amphibian species is threatened with extinction” he adds, “When we save the frogs, we’re protecting all our wildlife, all our ecosystems and all humans” a sentiment that we at Froglife agree with.

Amphibians have permeable skin which makes them highly susceptible to changes in their environment. Their absence from a habitat can be an indicator of an unhealthy ecosystem, and can highlight the impact of pollution, habitat degradation, and climate change. The disappearance of amphibians affects the entire food web. It can cause a decline in the abundance of amphibian predators, and an explosion in prey species usually eaten by amphibians – including pest insects that feed on crops, and spread harmful diseases such as malaria. Humans also have a personal stake in amphibian survival. Incredibly, 10% of all Nobel Prizes in Physiology and Medicine have been awarded to research which involved amphibians, research which has led to a cure for peptic ulcers and many other medical advancements.

Model FrogsWhat you can do

So hop to it, and help Froglife spread the conservation message by joining us at one of two events running on Saturday the 26th of April. In London, we are hosting a range of activities including ‘decorate a frog’ at the WWT London Wetland Centre from 10am. Paint a frog to look like your favourite UK or tropical species, or let your imagination run wild and conjure up a whole new species altogether! Alternatively, join us at the Kelvingrove Park and Museum in Glasgow where you can get up close and personal with amphibians and their friends by attending one of our pond dipping sessions and other froggy activities from 2pm. At both events Froglife staff will be on hand to answer any questions you may have, demonstrate the Dragon Finder App to help you record your sightings and tell you more about the work of Froglife and how you can get involved. To find out more visit our website

 

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