Annual demonstration moments
Every year, in all participating provinces, there will be demonstration moments when we will showcase the effectiveness of our trials at locations with and without natural enemies.
In this LIFE project, we will conduct large-scale testing to establish the extent to which natural enemies (tits, ichneumon wasps and flies, the forest caterpillar hunter) can reduce the problems caused by the oak processionary. We believe it is especially important to demonstrate techniques in the field and enable all potentially interested parties to access our trial locations. On the sites, we will take people along to both control trial locations (where we are taking no action) and trial locations where we are attracting natural enemies (e.g. by installing nesting boxes or via adapted verge management to attract ichneumon flies). People will then be able to see the impact of the activities on the number and size of the oak processionary nests for themselves. By doing this, we hope to convince local authorities, policy-makers, pest-controllers and others that the oak processionary can also be controlled without pesticides.
Each year, demonstration moments will be organised in each of the participating provinces. If you would like to be kept up-to-date, sign up to receive our newsletters now! Keep an eye on our event diary too.