VISIT TOMORROW: The Fairy and Gnome Festival

Visit Oatland Island Wildlife Center

TOMORROW

Saturday May 10th

10am-2pm

Come visit and enjoy or Fairy and Gnome Festival! Those of you who have been to our festival before know that there are so many fun and wonderful activities for the whole family to enjoy! You can make a fairy house, mine for gems, fairy and gnome fashion show, and more! The entry price is just admission, but there are extra fees for some of the activities. We CAN'T WAIT to see you there! 

To help you get ready to celebrate all things Fairy and Gnome, we want to share with you some fun facts surrounding Georgia native endangered fairy and gnome species! 

FAIRY TALES

Fairy shrimp: The Stone Mountain fairy shrimp and Moore's eubranchipus are two species of teeny tiny shrimps that have been found in Georgia, though the Stone Mountain Fairy Shrimp is so rare it hasn’t been spotted since the 1940s!

Fairy shrimp can typically be found in clear, cool water in well-vegetated ephemeral pools. What’s an ephemeral pool? Yeah, we didn’t know either! Vernal pools, also called vernal ponds or ephemeral pools, are seasonal pools of water that provide a habitat for distinctive plants and animals.

Fairy Shrimp are super interesting animals because of their unique life cycle, where they thrive in temporary water sources like vernal pools, rapidly reproducing and growing before the water dries up, thanks to their incredibly resilient eggs that can survive long periods of drought and extreme temperatures, making them a fascinating example of adaptation in nature; they also have a delicate, translucent appearance with multiple pairs of feathery legs, giving them a visually appealing "fairy-like" quality. They are related to the brine shrimp that we know and love as Sea Monkeys. These animals are proof that nature can thrive in extreme conditions and that cute and tiny things can be tough, too!

A Rare image of a Stone Mountain Fairy Shrimp

Fairy Shrimp Examples in the Genus Eubranchipus (the same as the Moore's fairy shrimp!)

GNOME IF YOU WANT TO...

Rock Gnome Lichen: While you might not think of lichen as a living thing, the Rock Gnome Lichen is actually a pretty complex life form! Lichen is a hybrid colony of algae and fungi in a mutualistic relationship. The fungi support the algae with shelter and absorption of nutrients to survive while the algae photosynthesize to provide food for the fungi. Neither can survive without the other, and so they are connected! Lichen are actually incredibly important bioindicators, meaning that scientists can tell how an ecosystem is doing based on whether or not lichen are doing well within that ecosystem and by studying what pollutants they absorb.

There are more than 20,000 species of Lichen in the world and the Rock Gnome Lichen is an Endangered species found in Georgia! This rare lichen grows only in areas of high humidity, such as high-elevation vertical rock faces that are frequently bathed in fog or in deep gorges at lower elevations. It has tiny leaf-like structures that stick out from rock faces and are greenish-brown in color, making them look like tiny gnomes. Lichen in the world is an important food source for many animals like deer and elk, and many birds use lichen as a camouflage for their nests! 

Check out all these little gnomes waving up at you!

While these rare species are aptly named, they are also endangered because of the extreme conditions they live in. Regardless of whether you prefer fairies or gnomes, Lichen or Shrimp, we are looking forward to seeing you during our Fairy and Gnome Festival this weekend!!!