The National Eisteddfod in Wales is (apparently) the largest cultural festival in Europe. It’s for this reason that the Wales Resilient Ecological Network (WaREN) and Stand for Nature Wales, our youth climate change project, decided to attend and join forces. We had a shared theme of the nature crisis, with WaREN focusing on invasive (non-native) species as one of the ‘top five’ causes of biodiversity loss.

WaREN promoted its Ecosystem Invaders campaign with an aim of increasing awareness of invasive species and their impacts in Wales. During the campaign we’ve promoted ‘Be Plant Wise’ and ‘Check, Clean, Dry’ but also developed our own campaign materials including leaflets, explainer clips, weekly quizzes and bilingual ‘top trumps’.

Our stand at the Eisteddfod was located in the Science Village. Here we had to compete for attention with a (self-identifying) eccentric scientist and his exploding balloons, but we still spoke with nearly 1,500 people! That is direct engagement, almost all of whom were families completing our invasive species activities and games. These included an eDNA activity - with a fantastic PCR machine made of recycled cardboard boxes - and an invasive species ‘hunt’. We also had invasive species cartoons for colouring. While the children were busy (and learning) we took the opportunity to ask the adults if they’d heard of invasive species and biosecurity…

The Eisteddfod was our last public engagement push for Ecosystem Invaders this year but the online campaigning will continue, at least until the end of September. We’d love to reach our target of 1,000 people having signed-up on our website to receive handy ‘tips and advice’ on tackling invasive species in Wales! Please check out our partner pack here which includes campaign materials and a collection of invasive species quizzes!

Find out more about tackling invasive species in Wales!