Go on a nature treasure hunt

Planning this activity

• Create a scavenger hunt that your group will love. The Woodland Trust’s nature detectives spotter sheets can help you identify all sorts of local wildlife. Take a look at their spotter sheets for trees, plants and fungi, and animals.
• Choose an appropriate outdoor area such as outside your meeting place, a nature reserve, woodland area, riverside, canal, or park. If you’re going to meet at a location other than at your usual meeting place, make sure parents and carers know exactly where you’ll be, what people may need to bring, the day, the location, and what time to drop off and collect everyone.  
• Make sure everyone knows to come dressed for the weather. Don’t forget to check the forecast and be prepared for it to change.  
• It’s important to check the sunset times, making sure that you’ll have sufficient light throughout the activity. It’s best to run this activity on lighter evenings, such as in summer. 
• Remember to have suitable supervision, an InTouch process in place and activity consent forms. It’s important to make sure that anyone with medication, including an inhaler, brings it with them and gives it to a volunteer, too. 
• Make sure the area you visit is accessible for everyone, choosing a suitable place for drop off and collection. You may need to think about avoiding steps or steep gradients or including frequent breaks. 

Introducing the space

1. Everyone should head out to the outdoor space or meet at the chosen venue.
2. Explain the boundaries of the playing area and where the no-go zones are.
3. Tell people how they can use the space respectfully, without disturbing the wildlife or other people enjoying the site if you're in a public space.  Remind people to be calm and quiet, so you don’t disturb wildlife, and not picking any flowers or plants. They should handle wildlife gently, take litter home and put things back where they were found to make sure wildlife isn’t harmed or damaged.
4. Tell everyone where adults will be around the site and what people should do if anyone in their team needs help. This should include setting memorable spot where an adult will stay at all times.
5. Explain the signal to stop play and how long the activity will go on for. A long blast on a whistle works well as a signal to stop the activity.
6. If playing in a public space, young people should be paired up so no young person is left alone and they should run or move together.

Get together

1. Ask if anyone knows what biodiversity is. Biodiversity is a measure of how many different species live in an ecosystem. Human activities, such as changing land use, deforestation and peat bog destruction, reduce this
2. Explain that there are lots of different forms of wildlife waiting to be discovered, though we might not spot them immediately.
3. Everyone should stay where they are and close or cover their eyes to help them focus on using their other senses. What can they hear? What can they smell?
4. When closing their eyes, make sure all young people are stood or sat in a safe area and that there’s responsible adults watching what’s going on around them/you. 

Be prepared

1. Everyone should split into pairs or small groups.
2. Give everyone a scavenger hunt sheets and a pencil or pen.
3. Explain that the challenge is to find everything on the list. People could also take photos of, write down or draw what they find, after identifying exactly what it is they’ve found.
4. If it’s something that’s no longer part of a living thing (for example, a fallen leaf) and people can pick it up safely, they could keep hold of it to show everyone at the end.
5. Before people begin, show everyone any resources that they can use to help them identify the wonderful wildlife they’ll discover. There’s the Seek app from iNaturalist, which uses the camera on your device to help you identify plants, animals and trees. Or, for trees, there’s the Woodland Trust Tree ID app. These apps are designed to be family-friendly and can be used without registering or setting up an account.
6. Remind everyone about the boundaries for the hunt, including how far everyone’s allowed to explore and how long they’ve got.

Time to explore

1. Everyone should set off for their scavenger hunt.
2. At the end, everyone should gather together. Once everyone’s washed their hands, everyone should take it in turns to share their discoveries. What was everyone’s favourite find? Did they learn something new?
3. Remind everyone that biodiversity’s all about the variety of living things, on a local and global scale. They could remind everyone that WWF talk about biodiversity as ‘the magic ingredient that enables the world to work smoothly’.
4. Everyone should talk about why biodiversity is important, such as bees. Ask what we can do to support biodiversity. Ask how we can help anyone species that are struggling.