PARTECIPAZIONE
The success of the LIFE GREEN4BLUE actions is also linked to the involvement of local communities. For this reason, an important part of the work is dedicated to managing a participation process that entails involving different types of stakeholders, in order to share information, scientific knowledge and solutions for monitoring and controlling the territory.
In addition to the authorities directly responsible for the control of invasive species, technicians and operators from the agricultural and wildlife sectors, representatives of the associative and entrepreneurial world, and the citizens themselves will be involved in the project activities as people who are familiar with and use the territory.
In order to ensure continuity of its experiments, LIFE GREEN4BLUE will create a protocol of precise and concrete actions on the monitoring and containment of invasive species developed at territorial level together with all directly competent bodies (Region, trade associations, provincial police , SCI/SPA management authority, …), thanks to which the control will remain operational even after the project has ended.
In addition, educational and territorial animation activities will be carried out on the territories dedicated to the protection of biodiversity and the danger of invasive species, supported by dedicated informative materials, moments of discussion led by local animators and an app for reporting sightings of the species under investigation in the project which citizens can use to make their own direct contribution to scientific monitoring activities.
And combined with all these activities is the involvement of citizens in monitoring the presence of invasive alien species in the territory. A form of direct participation in scientific activities realised through a simple and convenient app.
This will be a working roundtable for the concertation of institutional bodies and stakeholders (hunting and fishing associations, farming unions, environmental associations, farmers and citizens’ committees), to define integrated management of alien species through a biosecurity protocol mainly focused on coypus, but also on biodiversity, water quality and other issues that may prove to be of interest.
Participation will be reserved for selected representatives of the various organizations, in order to share the technical aspects linked to the topics analyzed, and share them with the public.
This will constitute the extended form of the participation process with which the results provided by the work of the Technical Forum will be shared with all interested citizens, in order to create a common platform for the dissemination and discussion of the activities carried out by LIFE GREEN4BLUE.
Thanks to these moments of discussion, it will be possible to collect and exchange information and knowledge about local natural contexts, IAS and their control throughout the territory.
The involvement of citizens in technical-scientific activities of research and environmental control is an increasingly widespread practice that allows everyone to contribute and participate in research. LIFE GREEN4BLUE has adopted this approach, offering citizens also the possibility to report the presence of the two invasive species under investigation – the coypu and the Louisiana crawfish – through a free and easy-to-use app ‘borrowed’ from the CS-MON Life project.
Teachers and students will be involved in a program of classroom meetings and visits to the environment, to become familiar with the issues related to the environmental context of artificial canals, with the need to protect biodiversity and control the impact of invasive species.
Finally, a school competition will be dedicated to the protection of biodiversity, with awards going to the 3 best communication campaign proposals made by children.
