Volunteering for nature conservationLIFE Platform meeting

Tartu

Volunteering as crowdsourcing for private landconservation.

LIFE ELCN – European Land Conservation Network

10 Beneficiaries

LIFE ELCN – European Land Conservation Network

Main goals:

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• Creation of a robust european network for nature conservation on private land

• Test a number of private land conservation tools with an eye on replication at wider level

• Propose policy actions to support conservation on private land

LIFE ELCN – European Land Conservation Network

MONTIS - Pilot action A6 CROWDSOURCING FOR PRIVATE LAND CONSERVATION

• To establish protocols with landowners;

• To boost management through “crowdsourcing”, namely volunteering, citizen science, donations, crowdfunding, etc...

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MONTIS and volunteering

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Volunteers are probably more than 90% of the manpower we

deploy into management actions

Why?

For MONTIS volunteering is mostly

A tool to involve people in nature conservation

a participated process to reconnect people to land management

an opportunity to experiment conservation

Information andawareness raising

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Of course it is also manpower, but we dare say

volunteers are generally more expensive than professional work!

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A lot of resources to get them

Need a lot of motivation

Need a lot of guidance

Are slower

Do a reasonable work but a lot of room for mistakes(and therefore for learning)

So volunteers:

Should always be heard

Should be very well treated

Do tasks that enrich their experience

Are not cheap manpower

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As a NGO, MONTIS works mainly and preferably with volunteers

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With Volunteers we...

...try to better understand natural processes anddevelop actions to boost them.

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In most cases nature is already doing most of the work, so we just need to

give nature a hand (or several)

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LIFE ELCN – European Land Conservation Network

Activities with volunteers

Regular activities

• Monthly volunteering programme, more focused on Montis members

• Monthly academic volunteering programme

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LIFE ELCN – European Land Conservation Network

Activities with volunteers

Non regular activities

• Internal volunteering programme with members

• Workcamps

• Weekend volunteering actions

• Volunteering with companies/ enterprises

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Natural engineering

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Supporting natural regeneration

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Control of IAS

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Boost natural processes – Jay tables

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Plantations

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Capacity building and information actions

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Since the begginning of ELCN (may 2017):

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3 academic stakeholders involved in regular volunteeringactions

9 volunteering actions with academics

16 monthly volunteering actions

Started an internal volunteering programme withmembers

2 international workcamps

More than 200 volunteers involved

Planted more than 2600 trees

Collected more than 60 kg of accorns

Thank you!!

montisacn@gmail.com

https://montisacn.blogspot.pt