Cuddy Action Group

On Friday 25th and Saturday 26th May the Cuddy Action Group held a BioBlitz and Meet the Species Challenge to discover, identify and record the wildlife and nature living on our doorstep in Peebles and took part in the Olympic Challenge to record as many species from our area as possible.

On friday 25th May 140 children from the local primary schools led by local ecologists and experts from

• The Forestry Commission
• Sepa
• Tweed Foundation
• Borders Forrest Trust
• Scottish Borders Rangers

spent a fun filled day discovering just who and what lived in and around the Cuddy. The children took part in mini beast hunts, pond dipping, flower hunts and tree safari events.

On Saturday 26th the event was opened up to the public and a video documentary of the day was produced by Brian Whitnell of the Peebles photographic club.

Link to the Video Documentry

Other club members took the photographs which you can see on the site.

The BioBlitz was inspired by the Citizen's science project which was piloted in some of the local schools. Priorsford Primary School was one of the 4 schools involved in the Citizen Science project in the Scottish Borders. Citizen Science is part of the Scotland Counts project, a BTCV Scotland citizen’s science pilot scheme backed by Scottish Government, SEPA and SNH, which aims to encourage us all to get involved in observing and providing data on our local environment. This will help to improve the understanding of Scotland’s environment as a whole and take action to improve and protect it. We understand that it is hoped, in the future, to roll out the scheme to other schools in the area.