Last summer Ecsite has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with EAZA, the European Association of Zoos and Aquaria and BGCI, Botanic Gardens Conservation International. The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was designed to allow our associations to conduct a joint campaign, and following discussions, it was decided to concentrate the campaign on the theme of local biodiversity. As many of our members are already conducting activities on local biodiversity, it was felt that unifying these efforts into a single campaign would help:

1. To raise public awareness of biodiversity.
2. To get members of the public to set aside space in their garden, community area or even window box for the encouragement of local flora and fauna.
3. To involve members of the public in activities to measure biodiversity in their garden or other local green space.

For the campaign, we aim to produce a unified set of educational materials that will inform the public on these three points and encourage them to take part – and for this we need the help of Ecsite members! If your institution already has learning materials which would help us raise awareness of the biodiversity in your country or region, help people plan and manage a space for local biodiversity, and measure that biodiversity, we would be very grateful if you could send them directly to EAZA’s Communications Manager David Williams-Mitchell at david.williams-mitchell@eaza.net.

We would like to review the materials and create a common set of tools that are available to all of our members during the campaign period (2016-2017) – and we will be sure to check with you and give you due credit for anything we use that comes from you.

With the campaign due to start in January 2016, we need to get started on creating everything our members need to take part in this exciting and highly visible campaign; as a result, we would like to ask you to share your materials with us before the end of March.

Many thanks from the campaign team!