South East Landcare Biodiversity Conversations
South East Landcare Biodiversity Conversations
What's possible when Landcarers connect on biodiversity projects that matter to them?
Community Participation -
LP036-R008
The issue
The South East Landcare (SEL) region is a broad & geographically diverse area. We are all involved in revegetation and we wanted to explore what changes can we lead to make it more effective across our region. Building on research done by SEL in 2022 we held three Biodiversity conversations in May 2023 around common areas of interest across the network, harvesting ideas and wisdom for future projects. The purpose was to gain a clear understanding of the existing projects being undertaken by member groups in the SE Landcare region and connect people with SEL and to create knowledge sharing platforms for individuals and groups in our region.
The solution
The meetings were held online via Zoom facilitated by Kim Boswell (The Forever Agenda) and Alex James (SEL). Conversations were held about nurseries, threatened species and habitat corridors. Results from surveys that had been circulated beforehand were presented at the meetings and helped design the format of the workshops. Breakout rooms were used for smaller chats and a virtual whiteboard was used to harvest the broader group conversations and imagine what the biodiversity community of practice could look like in the future.
The impact
The first meeting was attended by 12 people, and 15 for each of the other two meetings. SEL has created three contact groups with 15 in the nursery group and 22 in threatened species and habitat connectivity group. The nursery conversation led to a comprehensive list of community nurseries and links to them to be shared on the SEL website. SEL is working to design of a number of web-based training sessions on nursery activities & plant propagation.
Learnings
Several planning meetings to refine the purpose of the sessions & define what success looks like, were crucial in determining the flow of each meeting and led to successful outcomes.
Key facts
- The purpose was to gain a clear understanding of the existing projects being undertaken by member groups in the SE Landcare region.
- A regional map will be created as a visual representation of revegetation work being supported by Landcare in the South East.
- This will help identify what future projects can help fill the gaps
- The data will be used to inform future funding proposals