Media seminar on biological diversity took place

On May 22, the International Day of Biodiversity, representatives of the media accompanied by experts of the Latvian Fund for Nature and the Nature Protection Board experienced natural diversity in meadow, forest and countryside’s homestead, learning to better understand the term of biological diversity and nature conservation.

Media seminar on biological diversity took place

On May 22, the International Day of Biodiversity, representatives of the media accompanied by experts of the Latvian Fund for Nature and the Nature Protection Board experienced natural diversity in meadow, forest and countryside’s homestead, learning to better understand the term of biological diversity and nature conservation.

To popularise the International Day of Biodiversity, the Latvian Fund for Nature and the Nature Protection Board invited journalists to a media training seminar – excursion. Aim of the seminar was to teach journalists of the Latvian media, who write about nature, with theoretical and practical exercises about the term of biological diversity and to demonstrate the importance of the protection of biological diversity in nature.

The Minister of Environment of the Republic of Latvia, Mr. Raimonds Vējons, opened the seminar in the rooms of the Latvian Fund for Nature. He invited the journalists to become facilitators for the communication with the society, explaining the importance of nature protection. After the opening the seminar’s participants went to the training expedition to the municipality of Allaži. Lead by the entomologist Mārtiņš Kalniņš, the journalists wandered along the forest trail in the nature reserve “Mežmuiža’s springs”, getting to know typical and rare plant and animal species of the forest and their place and function in the natural living process of the forest.

The next stop of the expedition was the Košsalas’ meadows, where the participants of the seminar together with the botanists Valda Baroniņa and Ivars Kabucis learned to identify indicator species of biologically valuable grasslands. To give a comparison, a usual dandelion meadow was inspected and the diversity of plants was counted there. On his part M. Kalniņš depicted the difference of invertebrate species on a naturally managed meadow and on a meadow that is not mowed and step-by-step overgrows with bushes. The seminar’s participants were surprised, that in the areas with cut but not harvested grass the number of different beetle species was remarkably less.

In the discussions during the seminar the journalists also got to know several practical advices, what everybody can do to take care of the preservation of natural resources. To show, how biological diversity can begin at everybody’s threshold, the journalists and experts also visited the farm “Aņķi”.

Written by Maija Medne, Nature Protection Board.

Translated by Richard Kaatz.