
Northamptonshire primary school planters aim to tackle flooding
"The beauty of these units is that they combine practical flood management with an opportunity to inspire learning about water, nature and climate resilience," he added.Resilience and Innovation Northants (RAIN) Project, which led the scheme, said each stainless steel planter contained 10 wildlife habitats, from bee hotels and hedgehog houses to amphibian refuges and hoverfly homes.Six planters at Oakley Vale Primary School in Corby were fitted with monitoring equipment to allow children and the RAIN team to track rainfall and water capture over time, while the planters were used to grow flowers, tomatoes, herbs and lettuce.Planters are also at five schools around Northampton and Brigstock Latham Primary near Kettering. The RAIN Project is funded by Defra as part of the £200m flood and coastal resilience innovation programme, managed by the Environment Agency.
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Alongside EcoMinga's executive director, Javier Robayo, and 'highly trained, highly motivated guards from Baños de Agua Santa', Brito led an expedition to the Dracula reserve in the Chocó region, near the Colombian border, to investigate the amphibians, reptiles and mammals in the area. As a result of the expedition, the researchers identified a new species of rodent. 'We knew that what we found was probably a new species,' he says. But it was the morphology of its teeth that led the team to understand they had actually discovered a new rodent genus, Pattonimus. 'Even globally, that's quite rare.' Discoveries on World Land Trust-funded reserves include the Norma Ewing's rain frog, identified last year by EcoMinga's reserve manager, Juan Pablo Reyes-Puig,during a research expedition to Cerro Candelaria. And announced this year, the luminous green Maycú torrent frog, discovered where the Andes meets the Amazon in the Maycú reserve by a team of researchers. 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