After the success of the Plastic Free: Mountain to Sea focus, EOCA is delighted to have launched its next 2 year focus:
Wild for Nature: EOCA's Landcsape Legacy Project
Saving biodiversity on land and in oceans, and supporting communities in a warming world
Watch the video to find out more.
Imagine standing at a viewpoint, looking out at the environment around you. You can see the highest mountains, the valleys between them, the streams that become a meandering river leading to a lake, to an estuary and then out to the ocean. Within this landscape are a wide variety of different ecosystems, vital for biodiversity, mitigating against climate change, and for communities. These include alpine meadows, forests, peatlands, freshwater habitats, salt marshes, mangroves and seagrass meadows, to name but a few.
As outdoor enthuiasts, we 'go wild' (get excited) for nature .... and also want to protect wild habitats for nature, leaving a legacy of a stonger, healthier, properly functioning environment for the generations to come.
EOCA will be funding projects which benefit biodiversity in a wild landscape. Our definition of ‘landscape’ includes marine environments, and a broad range of wild, non-urban spaces. Projects must conserve, protect, enhance, restore, and/or reconnect habitats within a given landscape that are particularly important for the biodiversity there.
This focus on biodiversity will also address the importance that EOCA places on the issue of climate change. Projects will ensure that the habitats being conserved are those that sequester carbon, reduce emissions, enable adaptations to climate change, and/or protect against further habitat and biodiversity loss.
It is also very important that the projects EOCA funds are beneficial to the local communities that live in, or near, these habitats. Projects will encourage local stewardship of habitats, alleviate poverty, support local ecosystem services, whilst at the same time, having a link to outdoor enthusiasts who value these precious wild spaces.
