What We Do

• We seek to make Monaghan Ireland's first 'Biodiversity Town', however we have found that although progress has been made we need to be able to communicate more widely to the local community what we, and indeed the council, are doing, and why. While some initiatives are an easy sell, others are perhaps less visible, at least initially, and we also need to educate the community to see and indeed appreciate the environment around them in a more sustainable way. 

• We are beginning to see an increased interest from the public and we need to be able to assist them in learning and implementing actions to preserve and protect local biodiversity.

• We need the skills to be able to connect with the public, inform them of the purpose behind the work that they see and to encourage them to become involved. We also need those skills to be developed among a wider range of our volunteers both to reduce our dependence on one or two volunteer members currently and on the cost of outside experts. 

• We decided we needed both a greater number of better informed and trained volunteers as advocates and the opportunity to promote the learning and the experience as widely as possible throughout the community. 

• Whilst progress has been made on the ground in this regard, it has not all been smooth sailing. There has been some pushback from the public against some of the changes which have been introduced by the Council, particularly around grass mowing regimes and the introduction of a policy of non-use of pesticides. 

• However, in the main, initiatives such as our dispersed urban orchard (DUO) and the Council's highly colourful pollinator planting schemes along roadside verges are beginning to make an impact on the public psyche, and we are beginning to see an increased interest from the public in understanding the 'why' behind the measures and finding out how they might implement some of these ideas in a small way at home themselves.