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Description
Swamps in Poland, despite the important role they play in the environment, are often overlooked, both in the public debate, as well as in programs designed to protect the environment. Public opinion often sees them as fallow land and on a legislative level they are not recognized as an important part of the natural environment as well. All these factors lead to a lack of effective protections, rapid diminishing of swamp land and irreversible damage due to draining operations, river flow regulating, and other investments that have a degrading effect. We would like to address these issues by recruiting communities across Poland that want to get involved in protecting their local swamps, mires, and rivers. We will select volunteers from across the country and act in their communities. Applications may relate to conflicts – investments that threaten ecosystems, or improper land use. But they can also relate to environmentally precious objects that require more protection and appreciation in the local area. We will conduct an ecology and mire protection training for communities that apply. We will also record short films about their history and publish a brochure entitled “How to Protect My Swamp.” It will be illustrated by examples of implemented initiatives from our project. We will describe the tools used and the result and the most important elements, as well as challenges of our work.
Summary of project results
Swamps in Poland, despite the important role they play in the environment, are often overlooked, both in the public debate, as well as in programs designed to protect the environment. Public opinion often sees them as fallow land and on a legislative level they are not recognized as an important part of the natural environment as well. All these factors lead to a lack of effective protections, rapid diminishing of swamp land and irreversible damage due to draining operations, river flow regulating, and other investments that have a degrading effect.
We responded by recruiting communities in Poland who want to get involved with wetlands, peatlands and rivers in their area. We selected submissions from male and female residents across the country and took action in their communities. The submissions concerned conflict situations - investments that threatened ecosystems or inappropriate land use, but also naturally valuable sites that needed to be strengthened for their protection and appreciation in the local environment. We conducted a course on wetland ecology and conservation with a lecture and field part for the notified communities. We created an interactive map of interventions around the wetlands, recorded short films about their history and published a brochure "How to take care of my wetland". We illustrated the brochure with realised examples from the project - we described the tools used, the results and the most important elements and difficulties in our work.
We know from the feedback from participants that the workshops have significantly strengthened their knowledge in the natural and administrative aspects of wetland conservation. In addition, they strengthened their sense of empowerment, which we also noticed among the entire local communities in the villages where we implemented the project.
As part of the project, we completed, updated and promoted the project website - i.e. the Map/Archive of Cared-for Wetlands, and launched a social media campaign.
It was very important for us to be able to debrief the situation - to update and describe the changes that took place after the project ended last year - many of the ongoing cases in the project sites have only been resolved in recent months, and thanks to the Stronger Voice project we were able to describe their follow-ups, some of which are ‘success stories’.
A key aspect was also the implementation of information meetings and, above all, the support of the Carers in a kind of ‘ambassadorial’ role. We held XX meetings in local communities and at the political level, presenting the results of the work of the Remember the Wetlands project and shared tools to fight for the protection of endangered habitats.
Our biggest success, in our opinion, is the meeting we organised in Michalow, in cooperation with two communities fighting against harmful investments in the municipality - chicken coops and a peat mine. The meeting was very popular, with more than 70 people from various villages in the municipality of Michalowo attending, as well as local government representatives.