Successful Applicant:
PEI Watershed Alliance
Award:
$2,500
Project Title:
Educating Watershed Groups in Engaging Their Local Communities About Wildlife Issues
Project Gallery:
Project Summary:
The PEI Watershed Alliance project entitled "Educating Watershed Groups in Engaging Their Local Communities About Wildlife Issues" successfully completed our 3 goals of:
Increased capacity of watershed groups to educate their local communities about wildlife
Increased awareness among watershed groups about ways they can encourage biodiversity and promote healthy wildlife habitat to their local community, and
Increased public awareness about the value of the conservation license plates in helping PEI wildlife
To complete these goals, we provided education on PEI's wildlife and biodiversity to watershed groups by hosting a Wildlife Workshop, inviting all watershed groups and other interested parties to a full-day discussion, which approximately 30 were in attendance. Presentations regarding different environmental concerns on PEI were given, including:
An overview of PEI's Terrestrial Mammals presented by Rosemary Curley, co-author of "Mammals of PEI" (published last December)
Identifying and Controlling Invasive Species with Maddy Crowell
PEI Invasive Species Council
Creating a Wildlife Friendly Habitat with Melissa Lefebvre
Canadian Wildlife Federation, and
An overview of PEI's Species at Risk with Shannon Mader, Island Nature Trust
Taxidermy mounts and discussion were provided by Forests, Fish and Wildlife; mounts were displayed throughout the workshop. An online repository of wildlife resources was created through Google Team Drive for PEI Watershed Groups allowing groups to access resources such as PowerPoint templates, conservation license plate promotional documents, and outreach activity examples. Educational kits consisting of plastic wildlife scat/track replicas purchased through this project, are available for groups to educate their local communities.
Wildlife benefits of our project include an informed and educated community that understands the importance of wildlife and quality habitat and realizes how everyone can help complete wildlife beneficial activities. Additionally, increased awareness of the importance of conservation license plates through the development of promotional materials for display at ACCESS PEI sites and watershed groups events, as well as the creation of digital documents for use in newsletters and social media, will increase revenue to the WCF through increased plate sales. Increased revenue in the WCF will ultimately benefit wildlife for years to come.