Bom Jesus de Braga holds a night session to observe butterflies

The Confraria do Bom Jesus do Monte, in Braga, the University of Minho / IBS / CBMA and the Bracara Augusta Foundation have an ongoing project that aims to study, characterize and survey the fauna and flora present throughout the area of Sanctuary.

This is a project to enhance the entire environmental heritage of this classified area. For Varico Pereira, manager of the Sanctuary for UNESCO, “this observation session is part of the inventory and monitoring actions of natural heritage, necessary to respond to UNESCO recommendations, in this field of nature. On the other hand, this project by Fauna and Flora of Bom Jesus reinforces the ties of collaboration between institutions and the local community, making it possible to discover a more unknown dimension of this resort, the life of animals and nocturnal plants, in the Bom Jesus forest. ”.

A team of final-year students from the Applied Biology course is currently carrying out the study and suggesting intervention measures that aim to safeguard, enhance and enhance all this heritage, environmental and landscape value.

For Fátima Pereira, executive director of the Bracara Augusta Foundation, “this is a project that mobilizes the Bracara Augusta Foundation to recognize the importance of environmental heritage, fauna and flora, which must be identified and protected, and which opens up a new approach and a whole range of new educational content. This is an important contribution to heritage and environmental education and to the promotion of an asset of enormous value for Braga. It is crucial, even a condition, for the preservation of the Sanctuary to invest in heritage education. This is an asset that has to count on the mobilization of the entire community and that is the only way to achieve it.”

In this context, on the 23rd of April, at the Santuário do Bom Jesus do Monte, a night initiative was open to the public and in which around three dozen people participated, including children, young UMinho students and adults of different age groups who he traveled through the forest area looking for and identifying animal species. A light trap was also set up to attract nocturnal butterflies for subsequent identification. This type of non-lethal traps is being used in a national citizen science project, which is monitoring the populations of these very little-known butterflies in Portugal at a national level.

The work carried out by the students involves direct observations, the use of sampling equipment, as well as photographic recording of everything that appears over the seasons. The project aims to obtain, in the end, a portrait of the biological community supported by the Bom Jesus forest as well as identify areas where management measures can be promoted that lead to the support of greater biological diversity. The work carried out so far has already made it possible to detect some curiosities, such as the presence of carnivores such as foxes and genets, as well as the location of preferential areas for observing certain types of forest birds.

Although it was not yet the season with the greatest diversity, frogs (Bufo spinosus), opilions (long-legged arachnids with a very characteristic cephalothorax) and grasshoppers were the stars of the night. In the short time that the light trap was active, participants managed to identify two species of nocturnal butterflies “quite interesting given their unusual color” in this group of insects: Hecatera dysodea and Orthosia cerasi.