Key Stakeholders : Volunteers

Dear all,

Greetings from Malaysia. In managing wetlands or any other natural sanctuaries, one of our vital secondary (sometimes primary) stakeholders are the volunteers, the passionate & caring people who are willing to sacrifice their time, effort and sometime money on conservation.
Can any of you assist me in sharing slides on this subject? Whichever perspective would be appreciated.

Regards

Harban Singh, Malysia
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Reply: David Stroud, United Kingdom

Dear Harban

You ask about the role of volunteers.  In the UK we are fortunate to have large numbers of volunteers who support biodiversity monitoring, especially for birds.  Whilst we are lucky in this respect, actually, the engagement of all these people is not a result of 'luck' but of many decades of focussed capacity building.  This has involved progressively building interest among the public and getting their engagement, first with simple recording, and then with progressively more sophisticated schemes and programmes.  And also long-term support from government agencies to the NGO sector so that they have the capabilities and expertise to support networks of volunteers.

There is an interesting article about the value of UK volunteers in bird monitoring on pages 39-40 of http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/sukb2010_tcm9-262382.pdf and at http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/page-4253.  This may be of interest.

Good luck!

David

David A. Stroud
Senior Ornithologist
UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee
Monkstone House, City Road
Peterborough PE1 1JY
United Kingdom
Tel: +44 (0)1733 866810
Mobile: 07974 257549
Fax: +44 (0)1733 555948
Skype: davidstroudjncc
E-mail: David.Stroud@jncc.gov.uk
Web-site: jncc.defra.gov.uk