Activity galore in Lismore

Lots of outdoor work is happening at the moment with Lismore Tidy Towns’ members working either on their own or in two’s. In the past week, weeding and cleaning in the following planted areas has been carried out and sweeping also, where necessary - the palm tree bed, the long bed by the hotel, the bed at St. Carthage’s Townparks and the Millennium Park.

Thanks to Michael McBride and Sean Daly for putting up bird nesting boxes on trees on the North Mall. The boxes were made by students at Blackwater Community School, Lismore pre the Covid pandemic and thanks are extended to them.

Lismore Tidy Towns is pleased to be involved in an anti dog fouling initiative with three other communities in West Waterford -Ballyduff, Cappoquin and Tallow - organised by Councillor John Pratt. Dog fouling on footpaths and green spaces is a problem faced by all of us and in the coming weeks, those four communities will be involved in an awareness campaign which will be linked to a county-wide campaign being organised by the Environment section at Waterford City and County Council towards the end of the month. Watch this space for more information!

ECO TIP OF THE WEEK

1. “Let Dandelions Bee’’ - This is a national campaign to make people more aware of how vital dandelions are in Spring as food for bees and other insects. It wants people to show dandelions a little more love by letting them bloom this Spring.

2. Dandelions and -ollinators? To have a healthy balanced diet, bees and other pollinators need to be able to feed on pollen and nectar from a range of different flowers from March to October

In Spring, wild bees come out of hibernation. Wild bees don’t make honey, so they have no way of storing food. This means that they are never more than a few days from starvation. Spring is when hunger gaps are most likely to occur. Dandelions are one of the most important food sources during this time.

The numbers of bees and other pollinators are substantially declining - one third of Ireland’s 98 wild bee species are threatened with extinction. We need pollinators - out of 100 crop species which provide 90% of food worldwide, 71 are bee pollinated.

Contrary to popular belief, it is our 98 species of wild bees that are responsible for most pollination here in Ireland, rather than our one species of honeybee. The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan says allowing dandelions to bloom in Spring is one of the key things that we can do to help pollinator numbers.