Churches Count on Nature 2023 is coming up from the 3rd to 11th June. Churches Count on Nature is part of Love Your Burial Ground Week, focusing on the brilliant wildlife to be found in churchyards and chapel yards.
Churches Count on Nature is a joint initiative promoted by Caring for God ’s Acre, A Rocha UK, the Church of England and the Church in Wales. The count aims to bring people together to discover the wildlife in their local church yard. Participants are encouraged to record the species they find, and their results will be collated onto the Beautiful Burial Ground portal within the National Biodiversity Network (NBN), a nationwide database of wildlife in the UK.
St Matthew’s Church Salford Priors took part in the count last year. During the week they had visists from the Salford Beavers, Rainbows, Brownies, as well as a whole KS1 trip from Salford Priors Academy. Including their own Muddy Church meet up, they have had over 90 children visit their churchyard to spot trees, lichen, birds, insects and plants.
They uploaded our records to Caring for God’s Acre’s Beautiful Burial Ground Project on iNaturalist. iNaturalist is an app for sharing biodiversity information. It is free and easy to use. You can find out more about how to use it here.
Sarah Folkes, Family Link Worker at St Matthew's says:
“It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to invite so many local children to our Churchyard for this special week. By giving young people the opportunity to experience God’s creation, we are helping instil a sense of awe and wonder as well as responsibility for caring for the world around us. “
Find out more about the Churches Count on Nature here.