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Isle of Wight UNESCO Biosphere

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It’s here! 🎉

The Biosphere Festival has officially started. With 9 jam-packed days of amazing events happening all across the Island, we can’t wait! 💚

This weekend kicks off with open days at Moorgreen and Northwood Allotments, 3 wonderful guided walks, kids’ art sessions at both Lord Louis Library and Quay Arts, a concert of the plants at Ventnor Botanic Gardens, and so much more! 🌿

Check out our programme to find an event near you (link in bio) taken in Isle of Wight by @iwbiosphere

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a month ago

A BIG Happy Birthday to the Isle of Wight Biosphere! This day seven years ago, the Isle of Wight was awarded Biosphere status from UNESCO. 🎉

In celebration, we’re hosting the IW Biosphere Festival, nine-days of over 100 events. Our biggest and best yet. 👏

Watch the video to find out more about what the Biosphere Status means for the Island and how you can get involved. 🌿 taken in Isle of Wight by @iwbiosphere

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a month ago

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2 months ago

We’ve loved looking back through photos from this year’s Biosphere Festival and reading about your experiences 💚

Thank you to the volunteers and event organisers who captured these photos, and to everyone who has taken the time to complete our feedback survey 🌷

If you’d like to read more about this year’s festival, including some of our favourite attendee quotes and highlights, take a look at our latest newsletter (link in bio) 🌿 by @iwbiosphere

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3 days ago

What an amazing festival! 🌿 We couldn’t have asked for more 💚

We want to say a huge thank you to every volunteer, event organiser, artist, expert and participant who made the 2026 Biosphere Festival what it was. It was so amazing to see the power of community, and we are truly grateful for the time and generosity everybody put in to this year’s festival 🌷

We have an incredible amount of footage documenting the festival so keep an eye out as we have plenty of photos, videos and thank yous to share over the coming weeks 📽️ by @iwbiosphere

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9 days ago

Did you come to one of our Biosphere Festival events? Please tell us what you thought, chance to win a £100 voucher! You can find our short survey at iwbiosphere.org/feedback or on any of our festival pages on the website.

Please keeping sharing your Festival photos and videos and tagging us in! We love to see them and will repost on our pages.

Thank you Nora Clinton for this photo from the beautiful Bonchurch Open Gardens.

#iwbiospherefestival
#iwbiosphere
See less taken in Isle of Wight by @iwbiosphere

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19 days ago

Marine Conservation weekend, what a blast and thanks to all our speakers inc Theo Vickers, supporters inc Mandy for wonderful videos! Proud to be part of IW Biosphere Festival xxxxx by @iwbiosphere

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19 days ago

Day nine of the Biosphere was a perfect ending. A successful Nature Safari, an inspirational Eastern Yar guided walk, a fun community picnic, glorious open gardens, abstract pigment art, future visioning, permaculture and animal husbandry, and then, to end it, some hands on Biosphere action - a beach clean under the sea fog at Watershoot Bay. Some bonus pics from yesterday's family bike ride too.

And that's it, the Biosphere Festival is over for another year. It's been absolutely *incredible*, what a brilliant community effort 👏🏻🙌🏻🙏🏻💚. We'll be sharing some more thank yous and thoughts over the next few days. Sign up to our newsletter (link in bio) to keep in touch and find out more. Please share your festival feedback at iwbiosphere.org/feedback.

#iwbiosphere #iwbiospherefestival #isleofwight #ilovewight taken in Isle of Wight by @iwbiosphere

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20 days ago

Thank you all for supporting our Marine conservation weekend, part of the @iwbiosphere festival.

Starting on Friday night with our sell out talks on local marine wildlife from our award-winning underwater photographer and marine biologist Theo Vickers, (recently featured on Countryfile), Ian Vallance from Wight (scuba) Dive School, Sue Barker about Yaverland Seapool and myself about Esprit Freedivers followed by delicious tapas from Barry, Laura and Ian.

Saturday was an early start at 0630 for our underwater safari led by Theo, with freedivers Andy, Carley, Hal, Liz, Mandy, Suzanne, Rebecca, Andrea and additional safety kindly provided by Ian and Luis. We spotted many bass, wrass, sea spiders, a baby cuttlefish plus eggs, many ray feeding troughs and scallops amongst the beautiful flowering seagrass meadows. Having worked up an appetite, we enjoyed a delicious hearty breakfast at The Barracks, Puckpool then onwards for an ever entertaining IW Distillery tour from Malcolm, gin tasting and lunch!

Thank you for our video from our talented freediver Mandy Brown and to all our wonderful supporters - donations from profits going to Project Seagrass and Surfers Against Sewage.

Thank you to Rebecca and Andrea who travelled from the mainland especially to join us for the weekend of freediving fun!!

Waitlist now open for 2027, don't wait as we always sell out! Links to our website www.espritfreedivers.com in the bio xxx by @iwbiosphere

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20 days ago

..
🌱🦋Bonchurch open gardens 🌱🦋
Beautiful garden spaces and displays. What a treat in the sunshine 💛
A unique area, that allows rare plants to grow, in places you wouldnt expect!
We found terrapins, 🐢 lizards 🦎 and some huge koi fish! 🐟
Topped off with a cracking cream tea, it was a busy @iwbiosphere event, with lots of places to explore. Thanks to the Bonchurch team for the warm welcome 💚
#isleofwightbiospherefestival #isleofwightbiosphere #unescobiosphere #isleofwightlife by @iwbiosphere

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20 days ago

Here are some highlights from our ‘Ebb and Flow’ workshop at the Isle of Wight Biosphere Festival!

Thank you to everyone who joined us by the River Medina—your creativity and openness were amazing, and the work you devised was very beautiful to watch.

A special thank you to @the_collective_resonance for your research and preparation, which made this experience possible.

We also want to send a huge thank you to @iwbiosphere for including us in your wonderful program! 🌊 taken in River Medina, Dodnor by @iwbiosphere

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21 days ago

It was a great day of collaborative species recording yesterday at the Biosphere BioBlitz.

A BioBlitz involves recording as many species as possible in one location over 24 hours and this year the event took place The Water Mill, Calbourne.

The event kicked off Friday evening with a bat walk led by @IOWbat group - where 5 x species of bat were recorded using bat detectors with the extra bonus of Glow-worms being spotted!

Alongside this, our County Moth Recorder set out 12 moth traps around site which yielded an incredible 130 species of moth (expected to increase after further ID).

We were then back onsite bright and early on Saturday morning for more species spotting.

Blustery, overcast conditions mean't a bit of a slow start, but once the skies cleared, the records started to clock up.

Some noteable finds included stunning Wasp Spiders and a Grass Snake plus over 100 species of native plants!

At the close of play, the provisional tally stood at around 275 species! 👏

A huge thank you to the hosts at The Water Mill, to Lauren and Amy from the IW MAB Youth Biosphere Team, Team iWatch Wildlife , IWNHAS volunteer recorders and all the participants for their interest in local nature and for contributing to the total for the day 💚

📸 Wasp Spider by Natalie Bone
📸 6 spot Burnet Moth by Jillie Pope

#iwbiosphere #iwbiospherefestival by @iwbiosphere

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21 days ago