Pollinator Project is main winner
THE top prize in the 2018 Insurance Corporation Conservation Awards was awarded to the Pollinator Project for making conservation awareness fun for hundreds of islanders in just one year.
Other winners included the Guernsey Trees for Life project and Vale Primary School’s mini woodland project, which picked up three separate awards.
The top prize of £1,500 for the Pollinator Project is to be spent on a project with local farmers that encourages them to plant pollinator-friendly hedging through the farming community.
One of the founders, Vic Froome, said those involved had reached a point where they were no longer arguing about the importance of pollinator insects, but making it fun and interesting for both children and adults to get involved.
‘For me, the point is getting all age groups to understand that insects can be beautiful. Vanessa [Crispini-Adams] and Barry [Wells] have been out to 500 schoolchildren and they’ve found the children have been really interested asking difficult questions,’ he said.
Although the Pollinator Project began only last year, with help from the States biodiversity grant, it has already had a large impact thanks to its innovative methods.
The project has worked in tandem with another of the winners, Vale Junior School.
Reception teacher Emma Dorrian said the mini woodland consisting of 66 trees planted by pupils around the school grounds had been assisted by Ms Crispini-Adams.
‘She really drove it forward, we managed to get the best out of our space,’ she said.
With its prize money the school is going to be able to launch a number of other wildlife learning projects including buying webcams for the bird boxes, which will be linked up directly to individual laptops, and a pond.
The runner-up prize of £1,000 was awarded to Guernsey Trees For Life, headed by Andy McCutcheon, for its scheme to plant native trees on sites around Guernsey with community support.
Vale Primary School won £500 for Best School Project, a further £250 for the Young Conservationists of the Year Award and another £500 as winners of the Peter Walpole People’s Choice Award, which was created in honour of the founder of Insurance Corporation, which was decided by public vote.
