Saving the Birds n Bees: Environmental Leadership Challenge
Student experience 9th July 2019

Natalia Jagielska, MEarthSci student at the University of Manchester, gave us some insight into her work for the Environmental Leadership Challenge as part of Uprising Leadership. The scheme encourages young students and professionals in major metropolitan areas to run their own campaigns. The campaigns aim to improve the local environment by involving local communities and organisations, proposing sustainable solutions, creating useful resources or educational activities.
Our project, Saving the Birds n Bees, used the generous funding of University of Manchester Social Responsibility Fund. The grant was provided in hope of improving the environment of Greater Manchester. Like the name of our project suggests, the aim is to improve the biodiversity of urban green spaces, bringing the “jungle” into the concrete jungle.

The Bees
The “Great colony collapse”, or mass dying of bees globally, is not only a strong proxy for the destructive impacts of urbanisation, but also puts an exclamation mark on the problem. Bees are an essential component of agriculture and food webs, and with their disappearance entire food markets and global economies are at risk, not to mention the tremendous scar on biodiversity this trend will leave. One way of tackling this problem is preventing development of floral monoculture (flat grasses in public spaces), and replacing them with much more varied (and colourful) flowering, meadow plants, which is what our team did thanks to the funding. Other solutions include the creation of safe hives in areas of greenery, like parks, attracting bees to return to urban areas but settle in friendlier environments. To create secure housing for the insects, thanks to the funding, numerous “bee hotels” were installed across Greater Manchester, such as these at Platt Fields park:

The bee hotels were installed in correlation with the orchard rejuvenation area in the park. The actions were photographed and advertised on social media, hoping to inspire more people to take simple steps making environments eco-friendlier.
The Birds
While handling the bee disappearance problem has been paramount, the project also focused on other aerial creatures – birds. Birds are essential to the healthy functioning of an environment. They are more mobile than most animals, so their monitoring can help us to understand environmental health. Birds are also major pest removers, and form an essential aspect of natural environmental landscape. We used the funds to purchase various types of bird boxes, to install in fashion like the “bee hotels”.

The bird boxes are maintained by the active volunteer groups of the respective communities. One purchased bird box possesses a live camera, and this facet will be used by Oldham Council of Greater Manchester to monitor their avifauna. The project was also photographed and advertised on social media under guise #BirdBoxChallenge, after a now-old internet fad.
The funding allowed us to purchase materials that were and are being installed in Manchester to aid faunal development and environmental renovation. We are happy birds and bees of Greater Manchester will find a new, safe home despite the fast development of the urban area.
Follow Save the Birds and Bees on Twitter @BnB_MCR
Bird Box ChallengeEnvironmental Leadership ChallengeManchester Social Responsibility
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