Organized by Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department is collaborating with the Outdoor Wildlife Learning Hong Kong (OWLHK). This activity promotes the concept of citizen science and encourages students and the public to explore the local wildlife, appreciate the rich biodiversity in country parks and enjoy the fun of nature.

OWLHK, together with Mr. Shaun Martin, is serving as the main coordinator for this year's City Nature Challenge on a voluntary basis. We aim to promote local biodiversity to raise general public awareness by organizing a series of BioBlitz activities. Help Hong Kong to achieve a higher ranking in the competition and contribute valuable data to the biodiversity database.

Funded by The Swire Group Charitable Trust, the project will include the FIRST Hong Kong territory-wide baseline survey for “children nature connectedness” and “outdoor environmental education in primary school”. Together with a series of work on publicity and advocacy, different stakeholders in the society would get an insight into the significance of connecting with nature, as well as drive the development of outdoor environmental education as a whole for the sake of the well-being of Hong Kong citizens, especially in children.

Funded by Gifted Education Foundation, the programme aims to reinforce the understanding of marine ecology, biodiversity and natural conservation in gifted students and develop students’ skills in carrying out scientific enquiry, and devise relevant applications through studying marine ecology. Most importantly, it motivates students to establish positive attitudes and values which are essential for personal growth and community development.

The project is divided into two parts. First, it fosters the general public to learn and appreciate Lantau’s wetland environments and wildlife (particularly aquatic insects) via various art activities, including underwater photography and art creation workshops. Second, it consists of Wetland Ecology Tutor Training for Tertiary Students and subsequent citizen science activities. These provide opportunities for the general public to have in-depth understanding about Lantau’s wetland ecology and contribute to the conservation by participating in wetland beetle surveys.

Collaborated with professionals, participants obtained the butterfly observation and identification techniques, learnt about the relationship between plant and butterfly. The public were able to acquire the basic knowledge and ecology about these beautiful insects as well as how important they are to the local ecology.

With the use of Hong Kong’s first-and-only board games with themes of intertidal and butterfly ecology, this programme trained secondary students to become ecology board game ambassadors. In term, they led board game sessions in their own schools to promote Hong Kong’s ecology and biodiversity through game education.

Funded by Gifted Education Foundation, this programme about insect ecology was designed and kicked off to reinforce the knowledge of ecology and biodiversity for gifted primary students. Students developed their skills in carrying out scientific research and devising necessary skills for application. In a long term, the programme aimed to establish students’ positive attitude and values towards the environment.

Collaborated with professional tutors who were sophisticated in local spider research, this course led participants to explore the organism’s morphology and structure, observation and identification techniques of spiders in Hong Kong. The public could dispel their misunderstandings about spiders and their importance to local wildlife.

This programme was an Environmental Science Course organised by the Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education and co-organised by the OWLHK. Through the programme, secondary students learnt about local ecology and biodiversity. With an in-depth exploration addressing different ecological conservation issues, “student leaders” executed their own group projects in a variety of formats to spread out conservation messages to the wider public.

Develop app which provides four routes of “Lantau ecology and cultural in-depth echo tour” for the hiker to self-explore the countryside of Lantau. In addition, we organize ecological education activities, where trained eco-ambassadors will introduce the rich natural diversity of Lantau to the public.

With the theme of common insect pollinators in Hong Kong, the programme aims to educate and promote insect ecology to the public through diversified educational activities, outdoor field trips and “Insect Hotel”. By popularizing the “Insect Hotel”, we could provide more nursery places for insect pollinators.

The Forest Ecology Nature Logbook Activity invited public participants and professional ecological illustrators to conceive and design collectively to publish a self-motivated and sensation-driven ‘Forest Exploration Logbook’. The online version is open for the public to download, bring it out outdoors and start forest exploration.

OWLHK would like to express our greatest gratitude and appreciation to The D. H. Chen Foundation and its team for their generous and whole-hearted support this year. The financial and capacity-building support provided by Project Fuel 2.0 not only helped our organization weather a challenging time, but also allow us to focus in maintaining our efforts during the pandemic to provide needed environmental education services to the local community.

We design real-world problem-solving orientation, thus, students can understand the environment, history and ecology knowledge of Hong Kong rural areas such as Lai Chi Wo and Pui O through interesting orientation games.

Collaborate with professional tutors, leading the participants to understand the basic knowledge and identification skills of amphibians and reptiles by experiencing night safari. Let the public understand how critical these mystery animals are and their habitat.

Funded by Gifted Education Foundation (GEF), OWLHK collaborate with The Science Unit of Lingnan University to organise a programme for secondary students to learn about Hong Kong biodiversity and how to utilise Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Grouped students need to conduct an investigation of the urban ecology of Hong Kong through the use of GIS for analysis and construct a GIS map and StoryMap.

Through board games, beach cleaning activities and coastal eco-tours, to explore how marine debris influences local ecology. Educational and experiential activities cover tertiary, secondary and primary students and the member of public. Promoting environmentally friendly living habits and resolving marine debris pollution by educating the general public.

OWLHK organized the first spider ecology education programme in Hong Kong. We aim to increase public awareness of spider ecology through comprehensive educational activities and citizen science baseline surveys and also provide an important Hong Kong spider ecology database.

OWLHK conduct ecology surveys and consultation. This year, we carried out baseline surveys on plants and animals. Monitoring and recording local biodiversity provide critical baseline information for the team to formulate long-term sustainable rural conservation plans based on professional advice and recommendations.

We collaborate with local freshwater ecology experts to organize this professional freshwater course. Participants can learn more about freshwater creatures, identify the aquatic insects, fish and understand the threats to this habitat.

We collaborate with local marine science researchers to organize this professional coastal ecology course. Participants can learn more about intertidal organisms and conduct coastal ecological surveys.

Face-to-face classes were often suspended due to the pandemic. Students were unable to have outdoor learning and field trips as usual. In light of this, OWLHK developed online courses and activities to provide schools with alternatives, so that students could still receive quality environmental education during the pandemic.

We use citizen science in a competition approach to encourage public to visit Lantau and conducting survey for invertebrates, and to help building the database of Lantau ecology and biodiversity.

We collaborate with local odonata experts to organize this professional course for public who are dragonflies and damselflies lovers and those who wish to join the field of ecological consultants and educators.

We cooperate with Light Be, the first social housing enterprise in Hong Kong, to conduct a Family Nature Tour for families living in the Light Housing in Sham Tseng. We led parents and kids to Nam Seng Wai, enjoying bird watching and the beautiful nature and scenery.

Dr. Xoni Ma, Founder and Education Director of OWLHK, drafted the Joint Statement and supported by various environmental education organizations and scholars. This Joint Statement was submitted as a comment for the consultation on initial recommendations by the Task Force on Review of School Curriculum.

OWLHK eager to push the development of board game environmental education, and we aim at publishing more local biodiversity themed board games. In this Programme, we collaborate with experts from the field of ecology, education, board game and graphic design, together we train and help tertiary students to design new local biodiversity board game.

Freshwater invertebrate is a creative theme for environmental education activities. Through investigating those insects and invertebrates, this programme gather public effort to conserve important habitats of South Lantau.

We aim at pushing the development and application of local wildlife videography. With the subvention from AFCD, we designed game-based wildlife videography activities and we run workshops in primary schools to promote Hong Kong biodiversity.

Our team visited Taiwan again, and having interflow with various environmental education organizations, scholars and governments representatives, including EnvEd Centre for Innovative Learning, Friendly Seed, Environmental Ethics Foundation of Taiwan, director of Taiwan wildlife documentary Mr. Yen-ming Liu, Outdoor Education Research Office, National Academy for Educational Research.

OWLHK cooperates with environmental education organizations and Education Bureau to organized a one-day teacher training programme to promote School Education for Sustainable Development.

Place-based education is one of our main EE approaches, this programme focuses on Lantau ecology including plants, amphibians and reptiles, and also through wildlife videography to promote the conservation of Lantau.

OWLHK emphasizes its capacity building and how to promote the development of HKEE, hence we visited Taiwan to learn from various NGOs and environmental educators and gained lots of invaluable insights.

Coastal ecological education is one of the main themes of OWLHK, and we are the service provider of many AFCD programmes under the Tolo Appreciation.

《Law of the Forest》is the first board game using local forest ecology and biodiversity as the main theme in Hong Kong. We have successfully archived the crowdfunding target and raised HK$60,000 on Kickstarter to publish the board game, and it became our heated product and welcomed by schools, parents and nature lover.

We organized professional ecological training courses, and this plants identification course teaches participant the basic concepts and skills in order to learning plants in Hong Kong. This course is very popular for public.

This is the first large scale board game environmental education programme in Hong Kong. Utilising《Law of the Forest》as the main education tools, we organized trainings, board game workshops, field study and board game environmental education conference, over 1,200 public participated in the programme.

Tailor-made for resident students in New College, including local and exchange students, this programme aimed at increasing their understanding toward local biodiversity and raising their environmental attitude. We have conducted this programme for four consecutive school terms and over 400 HKU students participated.

Collaborated with The Green Earth and The Mushroom Initiative, OWLHK is responsible for investigating and monitoring the effectiveness of the Plantation Enrichment Programme.

Together with experts and student society in HKU, this programme used ants as the main theme and through investigating urban and countryside ant diversity, to archive effective environmental education and subject learning.

Leading public to those Lantau’s biodiversity hotspots including Shui Hau and Pui O, learning about plants, butterflies, amphibians and reptiles, and appreciate the beauty of Lantau.

This programme was tailor-made for elders and tertiary students, through lectures and field studies, hoping conservation messages of amphibians and reptiles can be spread out efficiently to people in different age groups.

This programme aimed at raising concern, knowledge and attitude towards forest conservation in Hong Kong through Tertiary Students Training, Students Ambassador Programme and School Project Implementation.

OWLHK emphasizes the importance of training EE future leaders. Internship programme includes EE capacity building, and provide opportunities to co-construct EE goal with interns.

Since 2016, OWLHK provides professional ecological trainings for the MSc Environmental Management of HKU, leading students to visit and learn in different habitats.

We designed OWLHK Plant Diversity Programme for the AFCD’s Biodiversity Festival, leading public to learn in Hong Kong’s secondary forests, shrublands and Fung Shui Woods.

This Series includes field trips about amphibians, reptiles and plants. Game education were used in the trips and had overwhelming reaction from the public.

OWLHK was founded on 22 April 2016, and it’s the same day as the Earth Day!