In June 2019, The Community Foundation for Ireland decided to engage a panel of ecologists to work with communities across the Republic of Ireland in supporting them to develop Community Biodiversity Action Plans. We put out an open call to ecologists across Ireland asking if they could help us to help communities take action for nature. There was a fantastic response to the open call with over 60 enthusiastic and qualified ecologists expressing an interest in being involved in the process.
Part of the development for assembling this panel was attendance at a half day workshop facilitated by Hannah Hamilton an environmental sustainability and communications consultant as well as an ‘Environment and Sustainability Columnist’ for The Irish Times. Nearly 40 enthusiastic ecologists joined us for the workshop on 9th July in the beautiful surroundings of The National Botanical Gardens in Glasnevin Dublin.
The pilot workshop was jam packed with ideas, information and collaboration with each ecologist in the room willing and eager to contribute to this new venture. We are currently working together to further develop a community focused resource pack that will assist the successful applicants in developing their Community Biodiversity Action Plan as well as standardising the working documents for the ecologists’ panel to create a more cohesive programme. We received really positive feedback from the group of ecologists who said they found it ‘really beneficial’ and also ‘allowed them a chance to connect with colleagues from around the country’.
The reason for establishing this panel of ecologists is that in 2019 The Community Foundation for Ireland established a fund of €200,000 for the Environment and Nature Fund - Biodiversity 2019 where we brought together a panel of experts comprised of academics, independent ecologists, NGO’s and Heritage Officers as well as our own grants team to design a grant round to increase the levels of biodiversity across Ireland. These experts recognised the need for scientific engagement and that communities would need support from ecologists to understand local context and determine priorities based on evidence. They recognised the need to support action but also to support engagement in local planning by helping communities to understand what they can do themselves and where/how to engage with other stakeholders such as landowners.
We opened the grants to charity organisations as well as not-for-profits and community groups because there is a need for ecological knowledge to be disseminated through the communities and that they would need help understanding how to gather data, where to access maps, how to engage with citizen science initiatives essentially how to demystify a complicated area. The grant round ran from May 17 until June 28, where we invited communities to apply for funding to engage an ecologist and develop a Community Biodiversity Action Plan for their local area. The applications are currently being assessed by our expert grants panel and will be awarded to successful communities groups in September.
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