Every sighting counts

SCHOOLS, community groups and individuals are invited to take part in Lifesearch, a Western Port Biosphere event, in which participants record what plants, birds, and other animals they observe within the Western Port Biosphere Reserve.
Lifesearch 2015 will run from Saturday 17 October to Sunday 25 October. There are prizes for the school, and individual or group who record the most observations during Lifesearch.
Data will be collected as part of a citizen science project and will be uploaded to the Atlas of Living Australia’s database.
Schools can participate in the program during school hours. Friends groups are invited to make observations at the reserves they look after. Members of the community are invited to participate by observing species on their own properties or at local parks and reserves.
Lifesearch was inspired by 13-year-old Harewood Lyall, who lived at Harewood Homestead, Tooradin, in the early 1900s. In 1912 he carefully noted down his bird-watching observations in a notebook, which inspired the first Western Port Biosphere Birdsearch event, which was held in 2012.
Schools participated in the program and competed for the Biosphere Birdsearch Shield. The shield has been awarded each year since 2012, and Newhaven College currently holds the shield.
In 2014, the biosphere expanded this concept to Lifesearch, which aimed to document the whole span of biodiversity within the Western Port Biosphere.
This project is supported by the Atlas of Living Australia. The Atlas of Living Australia provides free, online access to a vast repository of information about Australia’s biodiversity. Lifesearch participants will be adding to the richness of this information with their observations.
The Western Port Biosphere Foundation has the goal of connecting people to foster conservation and sustainable economic and social development.
Go to www.biosphere.org.au/get-involved/lifesearch to register from Monday 5 October.