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Wageningen Biodiversity Challenge - six weeks of campus nature taking centre stage
A Biodiversity Challenge has been organised on the Wageningen Campus for two years now. During the Challenge, everyone can participate in species counting, helping us to get a good overview of what lives and grows on campus. Fun free activities will also be organised, such as an early bird excursion, an exhibition on the Flora Batava and an outdoor concert starring insects. This year, the Challenge is actually bigger than ever: as many as six weeks to admire nature on campus in all its facets!
The Biodiversity Challenge is organised by the Wageningen Biodiversity Initiative of Wageningen University & Research (WUR). All campus residents are invited to contribute to the final goal: count as many species as possible in six weeks. This is not only useful to determine the state of nature on campus, but also very enlightening and fun to do, for example together with colleagues during a lunch walk.
Join in!
This year, WUR is competing against 16 other European universities. Who will count the most species on their campus grounds? As organisers of the Biodiversity Challenge, we obviously don't want to finish at the bottom.
Taking part is very easy, even if you don't know exactly which species you see. To do so, you can download the ObsIdentify app. Use it to take a photo of a plant, animal, tree, insect or whatever you see. The app then tells you which species it probably is. At the press of a button, your sighting is entered on waarneming.nl.
This 'Bioblitz' competition is open from 22 May to 1 July for all Wageningen Campus employees. All observations entered on campus during that period will count towards the final result.
Excursions and activities
For those curious to learn more about campus nature, we organise all kinds of fun activities. For example, there are excursions where you can learn more about dragonflies, tropical plants or moths. You can also tour the Centre for Genetic Resources' gene bank and visit the 'Stories Plants Tell' exhibition in the library in Forum. There is even an outdoor concert "Entomophonia!" in which insects play the lead role.
Open campus day
The Biodiversity Challenge concludes on Saturday 1 July with an open campus day for the entire municipality of Wageningen. That day there will be many activities, including lectures, tours and stands with experiments. We warmly invite you to come and have a look, with your family and whoever else might enjoy discovering the campus up close.
You can find the full programme here.