Tag Archive for: corporate conservation

Get Outdoors this Spring with Citizen Science!

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Now that it’s finally spring and things are warming up and beginning to grow, it’s a great time to get your employees and your local community engaged in outdoor activities as part of your corporate conservation program. One great way to do this is by participating in a citizen science project.

Citizen science is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by non-scientific professionals. Citizen science projects are designed to be user-friendly for amateurs, and typically involve training to ensure everyone participating is comfortable with the techniques needed for surveys.

Here’s just a few examples of fantastic citizen science projects in North America that your team could participate in this spring and summer. There are many other great projects out there, of course, some of which (like Audubon’s Christmas Bird Count) are even conducted during the winter.

  1. NestWatch
  2. FrogWatch USA
  3. Nature’s Notebook
  4. NABA Butterfly Count Circles
  5. Project BudBurst
  6. NatureWatch (Canada)

For those of you with corporate conservation programs located outside of North America, here’s a couple of great citizen science programs that are conducted worldwide:

  1. eBird
  2. Project Noah
  3. iNaturalist
  4. Herp Mapper
  5. SPLASSH

Do you participate in any citizen science projects? Tell us about it in the comments below!

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Setting the New Standard: Scalability is Imperative for Accessibility

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This is the third in a series of monthly blog posts exploring the development of a new standard in corporate conservation certification.

In previous posts we have outlined the defining tenets of an effective Voluntary Sustainability Standard (VSS) that will encourage broad adoption and ultimately increase conservation on corporate lands. These tenets are accessibility, credibility and the ability to drive change. In this post we will dive deeper into a key aspect of accessibility – scalability.

The Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) has been recognizing conservation on corporate lands for 27 years. This experience has shown that the one thing corporate landholders have in common is the diversity of the lands they manage. Auto manufacturers have proving grounds, technical centers, manufacturing facilities and corporate headquarters. Electric utilities have facilities that create, store and distribute energy—namely power plants, transmission systems and substations. In the building materials sector, quarries, cement factories and ready-mix facilities are all part of the supply chain. With over 800 programs currently certified, WHC understands the possibilities and challenges of conservation on a wide variety of lands.

While many VSS systems are designed for larger, more sophisticated operations and, in the case of conservation, the best available lands, WHC sees potential in every landholding and welcomes all practitioners to participate. This is why WHC views scalability as imperative to facilitate broad adoption of the new standard for corporate conservation.

In its new standard, WHC is promoting scalability in many different ways, but the best expression of it will be found in the Project Guidance documents that will provide applicants with a clear path through a conservation project.  These Project Guidances are being developed through a multi-stakeholder process that sets the minimum requirements for recognition and defined a variety of options for higher-level conservation and education outcomes.

Project Guidances will recognize a suite of themes that include habitat types, education opportunities, species’ needs and other conservation-related activities that can take place on corporate lands. When launched, the new standard will have Project Guidance documents for grasslands, wetlands, arid landscapes, pollinators, birds, reptiles and amphibians, bats, game species, formal and informal education opportunities, green infrastructure, protected lands, invasive species management, and a host of other themes around which corporate land managers can design their projects.

Every Project Guidance lays out the basic requirement for recognition, i.e., the activities that must be undertaken for the project to meet WHC’s new standard. For every project, these requirements will include the need: to be locally appropriate, to provide habitat or community value, to exceed any pertinent regulatory requirements and, to meet a stated conservation or education objective. Further requirements will be specific to the stated objectives of each project and will reflect the conservation needs of the habitat or species or best practices in the delivery of conservation and education.

Once basic requirements have been satisfied, a landowner can then choose from a hierarchy of activities that will lead to higher outcomes and higher levels of recognition. This will allow a landowner to create projects specific to their site’s spatial or other limitations and then scale up to meet the full potential of the location and its surroundings.

Scalability is not merely about the size of the project. It can be accomplished in a variety of ways, as follows:

  • In a pollinator project, expanding from a basic native garden to a garden with plants supporting multiple pollinator species across multiple seasons or meeting the entire life cycle needs of a specific pollinator.
  • When implementing invasive species management, expanding from addressing a single species in a single location at a single time to reviewing operations across the location to ensure the spread of invasive species is minimized both on-site and off.
  • Creating outreach to a community by providing trails and signage, or expanding to embrace the local schools across a number of grades and connecting into the core learning standards.

Scalability allows a program to start small and then grow to encompass larger amounts of land. At General Motors’ Warren Tech Center in Michigan, the project team started on 8 acres in a former parking lot and now manages over 70 acres across the facility.

Scalability allows a program to add new projects or expand existing projects as it matures and continue to create conservation and education value. In Gaithersburg, Maryland, Asbury Methodist Village manages all available acreage for wildlife, but adds value by creating signs and interpretive materials for residents, hosting guest speakers to talk about the natural world, inviting elementary school students on site and installing structures like bird boxes to support wildlife.

Scalability allows a program to go beyond the fence line and connect to contiguous habitat or into the community. In Brazil, Monsanto Do Brasil’s Camaçari Plant does both as it restores and reforests a parcel of land that will serve to reconnect two large fragments of Atlantic Forest, one of the most threatened biomes in the world, and uses the project as a teaching tool for students from 40 neighboring schools.

For a VSS to be successful, it must be accessible. To be accessible to all landholders, it must be scalable. WHC is enshrining scalability in its Project Guidance documents, which will be published with the launch of the new standard later this year. In doing so, WHC will ensure that every applicant—regardless of the size and other strictures on their landholdings—will be provided with a clear path towards program establishment, growth, and recognition.

Read more WHC blogs.

Designing the Ideal Project at Ricoh Group’s West Caldwell Site

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When Yoko Perez started working for the Environmental Team at Ricoh Americas Corporation’s West Caldwell Office in June 2013, she started working to align their Wildlife at Work program with the priorities of Ricoh Group’s biodiversity policy, as well as to better engage employees in the program. She and her team recognized that working with WHC offers the Ricoh Americas branch a unique approach from Ricoh Group’s other branches to aligning with the company’s biodiversity policy.

The West Caldwell Office’s program includes five pollinator gardens, which were installed last November with the help of the site’s landscapers to pick the garden locations and 20 volunteers to plant the garden. The Environmental Team chose plant species such as lupine, bee balm, Joe-pye-weed, and black-eyed Susan that would be shade tolerant and provide nectar to pollinators. A small rain garden planted with pollinator-friendly species was also planted in an area near the building that tends to collect water.

In addition, invasive species such as multiflora rose, Japanese knotweed, phragmites, autumn olive, and Bradford pear have been observed on the property, so the Environmental Team is looking into controlling these species with the help of employees and local partner organizations.

Yoko and her team work hard to monitor and document their projects, including information on where each species was planted in the gardens and which of those plants survived. Monitoring is a critical part of every project because it provides information about what worked and what didn’t work.

Employees at the West Caldwell Office use the company’s intranet site, RWorld. Yoko attributes the success of her team’s program and the thoroughness of project documentation to their access to this interactive site, which allows employees across the country to post news and information, post comments and feedback, and share photographs. This makes it easy for the Environmental Team to share their monitoring data, wildlife photographs, and other documentation for the program.

Ruby-throated hummingbird observed in one of the pollinator gardens at the West Caldwell Office. Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

Ruby-throated hummingbird observed in one of the pollinator gardens at the West Caldwell Office. Photo courtesy of Ricoh Group.

Yoko says she also uses RWorld to spur employee interest in and support for the Wildlife at Work program. For example, she told me how she posts articles for her garden blog on RWorld, and also posts information and videos for events such as National Pollinator Week and Ricoh’s Global Eco Action Month this past June.

If you’re looking for ideas to better engage your employees or document your program, please WHC.

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This Year’s Christmas Tree, Next Year’s Habitat

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With the winter holiday season upon us and Christmas only a few days away, many living rooms and office lobbies are now decorated (or soon will be) with live evergreen Christmas trees. But once the holidays are over, what should we do with all of those trees?

I suggest using them to create habitat!

A post-holiday Christmas tree collection drive through a local school or community center is a great way to reach out to your local community and spread awareness about your habitat enhancement program, while also providing valuable brush for your projects.

As part of my Three Rs blog series a couple of years ago, I briefly mentioned using old Christmas trees in brush piles. Start by removing the branches from a few trees and using the trunks to create a base that lifts up the brush and provides space for wildlife to move around under cover. Intact Christmas trees or their brush can then be loosely piled on top. The needles can be left on the branches, as they will provide more cover and will be used by many birds for nest building in the spring. Creating these kinds of brush piles along the edge of your woodland or grassland will provide cover for small mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians to escape from predators, find shelter from the elements, and build nests and dens.

If you have a pond or lake, Christmas trees can also be used to create underwater cover for fish and aquatic invertebrates. You can tie together branches from the trees into a brush pile to be partially or fully sunk. Alternatively, you could sink single intact Christmas trees. Wood floats, so you’ll probably need to weigh the trees and brush piles down with a cinderblock.

It may seem obvious, but it’s still a very important to note: be sure to remove all decorations, including lights, artificial snow, ornaments, and tinsel, from the Christmas trees prior to using them in projects. These items will create litter that could harm wildlife and contaminate the water and soil nearby.

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Retaining Simplicity in Recognizing Conservation

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Humans love to complicate things. We all know that if we eat natural foods and exercise, we increase our chances of being healthy. Yet this has not stopped the growth of an entire industry of diet plans, cookbooks, and personal trainers to help us build complicated paths towards healthier lives.

The conservation world has done much the same to the simple act of improving a habitat or an ecosystem. We know if we plant the right things, at the right time, in the right place and manage them in the right way, we will see a healthier habitat and an increase in biodiversity. Yet an entire industry has developed to measure and monetize these activities and their outcomes in complex and expensive ways that can, at times, diminish the power of simple conservation actions and elevate human-centered, human-made targets over natural ones. This introduced complexity may even cause budding conservationists to pull away, fearing their efforts may be viewed as worthless.

In this world where the challenges facing our natural resources are complex, when a connected planet creates impacts far from the source, and where multiple forces are acting on wildlife populations and ecosystems, it’s indeed important to develop comprehensive tools for measurement and planning—but let’s use these tools to complement and not devalue the simple act of human-scale habitat restoration or ecological enhancement.

A typical Wildlife Habitat Council habitat enhancement program undertaken by a team of employees at a member facility somewhere on this planet has three key aspects: it enhances the ecosystem, it engages employees in design and implementation, and it connects with communities through education or recreation activities. Such a program may improve ecosystem services, may be part of a larger landscape-scale effort, and may even implement a Conservation Business Plan objective contained within a consensus-defined logic model but that’s not mandatory.

At the Wildlife Habitat Council, a program is always counted toward the goals it sets for itself – will the habitat be better at the end, will the employees be glad they engaged in this project, and have community members learned about a conservation topic in their own backyards?

If we only counted the efforts of our members under complex systems like ecosystem service measurement, many would fail and would do so for two main reasons. The first is that they have not designed the project to improve ecosystem services and the second is that they don’t have the budget necessary to measure baseline services, let alone improvements to that baseline.

The Wildlife Habitat Council is currently examining what counts in an ecological and educational framework and what we count in our application system in an effort to enhance our certification program. As we progress through this examination, engaging world-renowned experts and launching conversations around a myriad of conservation topics, we must resist the siren call of complexity and focus instead on the innate simplicity contained in nature and the ability of the humblest act to make a positive difference.

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Providing Homes for Burrowing Owls

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WHC member Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. recently partnered up with WHC’s Tucson office and the Arizona-based raptor rescue organization Wild at Heart to construct artificial burrows for rescued burrowing owls at Freeport’s Safford Operations facility. Freeport produced a video about this project and gave us permission to share it. You can watch the video to see the volunteers in action and find out more about this fantastic project.

If you live out in the western parts of the U.S., you may recognize the burrowing owl (Athene cunicularia). Unlike most owls, they are diurnal (active during the day) and nest in underground burrows. However, they don’t dig their own burrows, relying instead on the burrows dug by other animals like prairie dogs. They can often be seen standing or perching near the burrow entrance, ever on the lookout for predators like coyotes and larger raptors. (As wildlife photographer Mac Stone described this behavior, they are “so completely neurotic it’s comical.”)

A common strategy for helping burrowing owls on both public and private lands has been the installation of artificial burrows, such as the burrows installed at the Safford Operations. This project is particularly useful in areas where burrowing small mammals are not desirable.

If you have an interest in installing artificial burrows at your facility, please contact your WHC Regional Biologist.

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On Reading “The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist”

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Christine Bader, the author of “The Evolution of a Corporate Idealist,” built a career advancing human rights protection within the global business context. She started her work at BP where she helped develop BP’s human rights values and then worked on a UN initiative to start to normalize the concept of corporate responsibility in this important sphere. She defines herself as a “Corporate Idealist,” one who seeks to pursue pragmatic solutions within the corporate structure rather than advocate for disruptive change on the outside. The lessons she has learned, and shares in this fascinating book, are easily translatable into efforts to advance environmental protection within organizations whose main mission is not natural resources protection.

Many parallels can be drawn between Christine Bader’s efforts on behalf of human rights across the globe and the efforts of “Environmental Idealists,” many of whom may work with the Wildlife Habitat Council. Environmental Idealists promote best ecological practices on corporate lands, advance ecological reuse of contaminated properties and seek to instill in their peers a sense of urgency and action around the preservation and enhancement of nature within the corporate realm.

Three points made by the author will resonate with Environmental Idealists working on conservation within the corporate context.

1. The “business case” argument can be unhelpful but is necessary.

Bader presents an argument in her book that reliance on a “business case” as the only driver for good corporate behavior is a rationalization, not a justification – that the requirement to positively impact the bottom-line should not be the only reason to take steps to improve practices. She cites Sir Geoffrey Chandler, a former Shell executive who founded Amnesty International, who said ethical behavior should not need to be justified by financial reward and that expecting all management decisions to meet this “business case” is a poor guiding principle for decision making.

She does acknowledge that managers do have a business case to answer to. They are judged by decisions they take and outcomes they create that affect the bottom line. Their performance is measured in dollars and cents saved or generated. Therefore, it is in a Corporate Idealists’ best interest to understand and acknowledge the innate tensions between business and social/environmental goals.

At the Wildlife Habitat Council, members can make a bottom-line argument for engaging in their habitat restoration efforts–native planting reduces maintenance expenses; natural attenuation costs less money than constructed remediation solutions; exceeding permit expectations can reduce risk and increase predictability. In some cases, no business case is satisfied but other drivers like employee morale, community relations, or impact on biodiversity satisfy the need for a metric or KPI.

2. Distributed ownership is essential for success.

Corporate Idealists, in Bader’s book, understand that their success depends on engaging others in the effort. An Idealist knows her project has been adopted or institutionalized when someone from another function in the organization refers to it independently. Distributed ownership requires that a mandate for action is followed by a sales pitch to all the departments that will eventually be responsible for this action to be implemented and an encouragement to take ownership.

Distributed ownership can be seen in many of the Wildlife Habitat Council’s exemplary projects where leadership has bought into the idea of creating habitat enhancement projects, management supports the imperative with resources both human and financial, and employees deliver the results by creating a Wildlife Team focused on project implementation and community engagement. In fact, engaging community members and conservation and education partners can be the highest expression of distributed ownership as it takes ownership beyond the corporate org chart and into the neighborhood.

3. Incorporation into design and resource allocation is the “Holy Grail.”

According to Bader, topping any Corporate Idealists’ wish list is the incorporation of socially responsible projects into resource allocation and project approval processes. This incorporation suggests that these projects, while not focused on core mission areas, are institutionalized into operations and provides for more effective, meaningful outcomes compared to when the issues are bolted on following incidents beyond a corporation’s control. Likewise for environmental projects that seek to exceed expectation and go above and beyond requirements. If ecological values are incorporated at the design phase of any land-use activity and if resources are allocated to implementation, the conservation outcomes will be stronger and more meaningful to employees and community members. A simple act, like landscaping with native plants, can be seen as a departure from the normal approach to landscape management and, as such, becomes a heavy lift. But, once incorporated into plans, budgets, and resources, this departure seems less radical and becomes part of normal operations. For many Corporate Idealists, the biggest battles against the status quo are the internal battles against entrenched processes and perceptions.

This book is not a manifesto but more a recognition of the reality and an exploration of the challenges and opportunities to do good in a workplace that places value on those that do well.

Read more WHC blogs.

10 Native Vines to Attract Butterflies in North America

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Native vines are an important but often overlooked component of butterfly habitat. Many vines serve as larval host plants (food sources) for caterpillars.

They provide cover for butterflies and caterpillars, and the flowers provide nectar for butterflies (and many other pollinators, including hummingbirds).

Most native vines also have attractive foliage and colorful flowers that would provide an aesthetically-pleasing addition to your site’s landscaping.

Spring is generally the best time to install native plantings, so if you’d like to add vines for pollinators, now is the time!

Here are 10 examples of native vines you could plant to attract butterflies in North America:

  1. Dutchman’s pipe (Aristolochia spp.)
  2. Trumpet creeper (Campis radicans)
  3. Coral honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens)
  4. Passionflower (Passiflora spp.)
  5. Pipevine (Aristolochia macrophylla)
  6. Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia)
  7. Virgin’s bower (Clematis virginiana)
  8. Carolina jessamine (Gelsemium sempervirens)
  9. American wisteria (Wisteria frutescens)
  10. Crossvine (Bignonia capreolata)

It’s important to remember that these examples are not native to all of North America, so when choosing vines to plant, you should always choose species that are native to your region. Also, some species like coral honeysuckle and American wisteria have non-native, invasive counterparts, so you should be sure that you’re planting the native vine species.

If you’re outside of North America, we encourage you to consult with local native plant experts to select appropriate native vine species.

If you would like specific recommendations for your site, please contact a WHC Biologist or your local Cooperative Extension agent.

Read more WHC blogs.

A Hands-On Approach to Building the STEM Workforce of Tomorrow

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STEM–the acronym deployed to cover the disciplines of science, engineering, technology and math–is a hot topic right now. Statistics and studies point to a deficit in appropriately trained STEM graduates to meet the workforce demands of the future although governments, institutions, and NGOs advance STEM training as having great social and economic benefit to individuals in both developed and developing nations. UNESCO cites proficiency in science and technology as a critical element in creating economic opportunity. In the EU, the European Roundtable of Industrialists has partnered with a network of 30 European Ministries of Education to advance STEM education to meet a predicted skills gap. In the USA, numerous NGOs and initiatives have received generous funding for research and programs designed to get kids, especially girls and students  from underserved communities, interested in science and aware of the sciences as a bridge to a good job. Formally through Conservation Certification, WHC and its corporate members take a novel, practical approach to advancing STEM education. We connect corporate lands to STEM education and create informal STEM teachers from corporate employees. More than 80% of WHC projects contain elements of education, ranging from activities that engage pre-K children to PhD research projects on habitat quality and endangered species.

Students in Scotland engage in hands-on learning at a wetland. Photo courtesy of ExxonMobil.

Students in Scotland engage in hands-on learning at a wetland. Photo courtesy of ExxonMobil.

One great example of how WHC’s corporate members address STEM education is an effort by CEMEX, a global building materials company. It has partnered with WHC in the USA in Florida to deliver education in six non-traditional classrooms located where it operates mines for a variety of aggregate materials. These classrooms welcome hundreds of children every year with curricula that allow them to develop problem solving skills through hands-on activities focused on science and technology. CEMEX’s 474 Sand Mine in Lake County, Florida, is a 1,400-acre site with a variety of wetland and upland habitats. The outdoor classroom at the facility welcomes students from elementary through high school and provides lessons that align with state education requirements in environmental education. Students learn biology through plant and animal identification and owl pellet dissection, chemistry by doing water quality testing, engineering by constructing bird boxes, and earth sciences by exploring the difference between rocks and minerals. The students discover by doing, they learn from education professionals and, in a manner unique to WHC-certified projects, from people employed in the science and engineering fields at CEMEX and elsewhere who act not only as teachers but also as mentors, modelling what an actual employee in the STEM fields does. CEMEX is a global company that recruits graduates with degrees in mining, materials, and across the spectrum of engineering disciplines. By investing in its six outdoor classrooms it invests in its own future workforce. STEM, as touted in the media and in many of the more prominent initiatives, suggests careers in white coats and clean rooms designing medicines or jobs in Silicon Valley rolling out the best new technology at feisty little startups. Just as much potential exists for careers requiring hard hats, safety vests, and the ability to drive big machinery. WHC members like CEMEX, Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., and Toyota need a STEM-educated workforce. Many of them recognize that using conservation projects on their lands as alternative classrooms offers students hands-on experiences that provide an unforgettable introduction to STEM as well as real-life models for the mining engineers, automotive designers, or materials scientists of tomorrow.

Read more WHC blogs.

Bringing Nature to the Human Workplace

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The board of the Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) recently met at the 79th North American Wildlife and Natural Resources Conference in Denver that brought together nearly 900 conservation professionals from state and federal agencies and non-profit organizations from across North America.

By embedding our board meeting in the conference, we were able to build new bridges to the agencies and non-profit conservation partners we’ve been working with for many years. By participating in meetings and discussions at the conference, our message and unique approach to delivering conservation within the corporate world was heard.

One of the focus areas of the conference was what the organizers termed the “human dimension”–the people who benefit from, are impacted by, and are potential supporters for natural resources conservation. While wildlife recreation is on the rise in the form of increased numbers of birdwatchers and wildlife photographers, sportsman numbers are in decline for a number of reasons, including a diminished interest in nature in the younger generation. A census of sportsmen found a 46% decline in waterfowl hunters since 1966 while a 2013 study by Kids Canada found that 70% of 13-20 year olds spend an hour or less per day outdoors. These trends are of concern to the conservation community for many reasons, especially when it comes to garnering support for their continued work.

To address these trends, the community of conservationists represented at the conference held panel discussions and plenary sessions about our changing world and their hopes to engage new populations and new generations in conservation, whether as hunters or fishermen or as hikers or birdwatchers.

One of the causes of the decline in numbers seen by the conservation community is increasing urbanization that leads to a growing physical and psychological distance between people and nature. As the distance grows, nature becomes different and separate from humanity. It becomes a destination to visit, requiring plans, driving directions, maps and possibly entry fees and licenses.

A great way to reduce this distance is to bring nature to people by giving people the opportunities to engage with nature at their workplace. Considering that the adult workforce spends more of their waking hours at their place of employment than in active or passive recreation activities, workplace nature programs present a simple and efficient way to bridge the nature gap and address the separation.

Workplace based conservation programs are at the core of what we do at WHC. With more than 800 conservation programs that connect people and nature at their place of work, WHC has identified the following factors that make good, successful nature programs at workplaces across the world:

  • Support at all levels: Employee-lead conservation projects can happen without support from management but these projects only truly thrive when leadership at the facility and at corporate HQ offer encouragement and recognition for the idea of habitat projects on their lands and also work to direct organizational resources and energies in support.
  • Employees should follow their conservation passions: When a conservation project aligns with the interests and passions of the team charged with implementation and monitoring, success will be automatic. But the converse is also true; if a wildlife team is interested in a specific conservation objective like building native bee habitat but management or conservation partners direct the efforts elsewhere, excitement around the project will wane, connections to it will weaken, and ownership of it will vanish.
  • Recognize early success: When a new wildlife team is formed and ready to start a project, it is important that the team sees success early. This will be a challenge if a complex project requiring delayed gratification is chosen for implementation–restoring a wetland can take decades, removing invasives can be a never-ending task, and creating habitat for rare and declining species depends on many external influences that are beyond the reach of the team charged with implementation. Planting a wildflower meadow brings colors and birds in the spring, a pollinator garden provides rewards by attracting butterflies and bees during the season and tree plantings can provide employees with instant gratification that grows along with the tree.

Other factors that build success and engage employees as environmental stewards include adding an element of competition (think photo contests and wellness challenges); paying attention to physical placement and aesthetics; providing interpretive materials in the form of signs of trail brochures; and creating well-organized events around the project that broaden involvement beyond the core team.

By engaging working adults in meaningful conservation activities where they spend much of their waking hours, we start to bridge the nature gap, halt the decline, and truly bring a human dimension back to nature.

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