On the occasion of the MTV Mobile Earth Garden Festival and World Environment Day which will be celebrated on the 05th June, the Malta Environment and Planning Authority (MEPA) has said that it will be organising forty-minute educational Bus Tours from Ta’ Qali to Migra Ferha, limits of Rabat.

These tours, together with other initiatives MEPA will be participating in at the Earth Garden Festival in Ta’ Qali this coming weekend, are part of the biodiversity campaign that the Authroity launched in the past few weeks. This campaign aims at increasing the public awareness on what biodiversity actually means and how the public can take action when it comes to safeguarding Malta’s biodiversity.

Darrin T Stevens, Ecosystems Manager within the Environment Protection Directorate said, “Educational Tours to specific sites are an excellent way of helping the public appreciate and understand the dynamics and richness of our local biodiversity. Il-Wied ta’ Migra Ferha, the site to where we will be taking those attending the tours, possesses unique scenes of Maltese nature and is particularly important for its structural and ecological characteristics, including the large number of endemic species unique to the Maltese Islands.”

Maltese biodiversity is to be considered as part of Malta’s invaluable natural heritage, which offers other values such as social, aesthetic, recreational, educational, scientific and ecological. In view of this, the preservation of biodiversity is of utmost importance, and it is the responsibility of the whole Maltese population, to ensure the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity components.

The Authority, at the MTV Mobile Earth Garden Festival, will also be raising awareness about biodiversity amongst children, whereby in the Kid’s Playground area, children can learn about local species through face painting and colouring activities that will be organized throughout the weekend. MEPA will also be giving out free educational material from its Biodiversity stand which will be set up in the main area of the Ta’ Qali garden. Local artists attending the Festival have also been invited to participate in this year’s Art Square and use their talent to produce works of art that focus around the theme of biodiversity. These works will be displayed at an exhibition that will be held at the Ministry for Tourism, Culture and the Environment in Valletta during the month of September including the national event Notte Bianca.

The Bus tours which will be free of charge to the public will start from MEPA stand at the Earth Garden Festival in Ta’ Qali and depart on a 40 minute tour to Il-Wied Migra Ferha on the following dates and times:

Saturday 5th June 2010 at 17:30hrs

Sunday 6th June 2010 at 15:00hrs and 17:30hrs

Permalink: MEPA celebrating Biodiversity this weekend at Ta’ Qali