🧪 Citizen or Community Science
Activities
Collaborative Knowledge Projects
Three years of mapping fed collaborative projects aimed at regeneration: - School workshops build youth literacy on the river and responsibility for its care. - Guided ecological tours ground understanding in direct experience of the catchment. - Citizen science deepens monitoring literacy and shared ownership of data. - Artist residencies reframe how the watershed is seen and imagined. Each format stays multi-actor and emerges from prior relationship work rather than top-down design.
Pollinate HV
The group first mapped pollinators most at risk in the estuary watershed, then published practical guidance at pollinatehv.org. Local ecotypic seed—genotypes matched to the basin—was scarce, so they partnered with Hudson Valley Seed Company to produce it. Those seeds now move through the Library of Local network.
Human-Elephant Harmony
Since 2016, Human-Elephant Harmony has worked with Dusun communities, agencies, and partners to treat conflict as a coexistence problem. Herds returned in 2014 after absence since mid-1980s forest fires. Telupid’s forests had largely become oil palm; elephants used plantations for food and reserves for daytime cover, while unfenced smallholders bore crop damage—fueling calls for relocation. From March–December 2016, Forever Sabah worked with the Telupid District Office; village input recalled older protocols of mutual respect with elephants, so the frame shifted from “conflict” to Human-Elephant Harmony. Workshops began in three villages (a fourth joined in 2018) around a four-part plan: train a Community Elephant Ranger Team, map elezone zones, build citizen science, and fence selected sites. Kopisuladan di Aki (“friendship between villagers and elephants” in Dusun Labuk)—nine young professionals with strong field knowledge—received a February 2018 National Conservation Trust Fund grant (RM 200,000 over 22 months, co-financed by the U.S. Shared Earth Foundation at USD 65,000); five members became Honorary Wildlife Wardens. “Listening to elephants” tracks movement, diet, and use of oil palm. Observation showed elephants following machinery that clears mature palms to feed on chipped replanting waste—evidence that access to oil palm matters for nutrition in these landscapes and that trade-offs around plantation entry differ from simple removal narratives. No further translocations have been attempted from this area since CERT formed; several calves have been raised in Telupid. The team estimates about 25–50 elephants use Telupid—the northern edge of the wider Central Sabahan population.
Monitoring Strategy
Monitoring pairs formal science with in-context participation: “cold” metrics and “warm” observation together describe watershed condition. Citizen science tracks woodland, river, and coastal habitats; nature-connectedness workshops use paired individual and group evaluation. The point is not only whether targets are met but whether interventions match need—using community reflection to “warm” technical data and adjust practice accordingly.
Community Engagement and Education
At Colegio Virgen de la Candelaria, workshops linked students to their environmental heritage. Young people sampled macroinvertebrates, set camera traps, and—with great student amazement—saw güiñas and foxes on screen for the first time though they had lived beside those habitats. They debated how domestic animals affect native fauna and sketched responses. By the close, many children held ecological ideas that had eluded some adults. Dialogues surfaced urgent worries: water access (“I have to wait eight days for water delivery because I need the water”), rising river pollution, land pressure from newcomers, social friction (practices, consumption, trash, noise, loose dogs), and cultural loss—fewer yayipun ceremonies, palín games, and collective celebrations.
Ecological Assessment and Monitoring
In 2022, researchers and community members sampled macroinvertebrates in three Cruces tributaries—Colico, Afunalhue, and Petrohue. Stream quality varied by site: Afunalhue and Petrohue scored good quality; Colico was slightly degraded. Names carry history: *Cudico* suggests dirty water; *Colico*, yellow water. Camera traps showed a skewed roster: six of nine species exotic—dogs, cats, sheep, cattle, rodents—versus three native. Native fox and güiña (kodkod) still appear as hopeful signs. The work sets baselines and indicator species for later comparison. The community mapped currents across the territory, tracing contamination. At least four flows remain in good ecological condition; Coihueco stream shows degradation. Watershed characterization links local flows to neighboring areas and tracks shifts in species and water quality.
In the Zone Habitat Tracker
Since most of the land in the region is privately owned, landowners in the Carolinian Zone play an instrumental role in habitat sustainability. Habitat partners, landowners, volunteers, and community members are welcome to participate in the Conservation Impact Bond by logging their habitat projects using the In the Zone Habitat Tracker. This multi-partner platform, facilitated by Carolinian Canada and WWF-Canada, connects and assists diverse landowners and communities to grow, steward, and measure healthy landscapes using "Big Picture" measures of landscape health and resilience, as well as localized impact metrics.
River Detectives
River Detectives extends the community-science approach toward catchment care. From August 2023 to August 2024, residents researched historic management of rivers, bogs, and lochans—asking what past practices might teach present stewardship. The Flax & Flood strand traced mills, weather, and water—how nineteenth-century climate shifts and extreme events shaped operations and supply. That historical ecological knowledge informs today’s questions. Part 2 turns toward systematic monitoring so communities can describe current river conditions and inform management choices.
Tayside Community Science Initiative
As one of five NatureScot pilots, the initiative asks how community-led monitoring can strengthen resilience and regeneration—grounded in place-based knowledge, shared learning, and collective agency. An opening mapping phase surfaced recurring problems: incompatible methods across groups, weak hooks to regional or national strategies, and cases where communities collect extensive data but rarely see direct benefit. The team is now documenting live examples—from flood monitoring to heritage work on how Strathmore land-use history altered water paths—and asking what adaptive governance would mean for community monitoring that actually feeds decisions.
Waterford Bioregional Mapping
Mapping work combines science and lived attachment. Participatory workshops ask residents where they feel emotionally tied to the territory; those insights layer onto geological base maps of river basins and land use. In the Anne Valley, community-led water-quality monitoring adds ground-truth to institutional data. Throughout, the process engages Gaeltacht na nDéise (Irish-speaking Waterford) so language and culture stay visible in how the bioregion is drawn and discussed.
Voices of the Dart
A community-based river stewardship program addressing the projected 39 megalitre daily flow deficit of the River Dart by 2050. The initiative uses a three-pronged approach: educational workshops across multiple riverside communities, citizen science data collection in partnership with Westcountry Rivers Trust, and artistic engagement through clay work and storytelling sessions—bringing together scientific data with local knowledge and cultural connection. The project has produced tangible outcomes including a Water Data Resource Pack, targeted reduction in per-person water usage, and a growing network of citizen scientists monitoring water quality along the river.