Working in partnership with business-case studies on conserving swifts Apus apus – 1st May

2013

• Partnership? What's that all about?

• Parties “agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests”

It’s how we work- “its in our nature”

Partnerships

• Partnerships with individuals • With businesses• With interest based organisations• With schools, universities, governments • and various combinations thereof! • but it all comes down to -• Can we “advance our mutual interests”

Partnerships with business

• 2005 Sniffer project UKCCO4

• Business and Biodiversity

Belfast Airport and RSPB

• Case study was on partnership between RSPB and Belfast City Airport on managing bird strike

Lagan Group and Biodiversity in Quarries

Partnerships

• Partnerships “present the involved parties with special challenges that must be navigated unto agreement”

Unlikely partnership?

• What's do businesses have in common with biodiversity conservation?

Business take on conservationists?

• Tree huggers!• People who stop you

from doing things? • They like bats, badgers

and newts! • A real pain• Cost you a lot of money• Birds- messy things!

Conservationists on Business

• They love moving earth and demolishing things!

• They use a lot of the worlds natural resources and create a lot of waste!

• Knock down trees • They damage the

environment! -NIMBY

Are they really poles apart?

We have to be practical!

• I'm doing a job here • Bring me the

solutions not the problems

• Can we both benefit? • How much will it cost • Do I have to do it? • Will I get help?

Partnership Approach

• How can we advance our mutual interests?

• What special challenges must we navigate together to reach agreement and ensure fruition?

Crescent Arts Centre

• 136 years old • 2007- 2010 - £8.7

million refurbishment and new build project.

• Housed N Irelands largest know Swift colony built up over at least 110 years.

This fellow here!

The common swift – Apus apus

• NEVER LANDS –except to breed

• can’t perch • sleeps on wing • drinks on wing • mates on wing • how can it do this? • breeds – May June

July- then to S. Africa.

It comes from Africa to nest under the roof each year

Braecom, Hamilton Architects and Gilbert-Ash N.I. Limited.

The most important single step in advancing mutual interests

Know the species/habitat requirements!

You need to be there-sometimes hands on

And its not for the faint hearted!

You need to know what you are doing!

• How to refurbish and build -Gilbert Ash

and • How to accommodate

the swifts – (or bats orother protected species or habitats- NIEA/NGO)

• Need to understand and trust each other

Outcome - we got a refurbished old building – and new build.

We have old nest sites and built in new ones

We spent our £8.7 million! and hard work brings deserved rewards

It was a genuine partnership!

“We worked hands on together”

• I did my job • the partners did theirs• We both learned from

and understood each other

• It was win win win and we all won!

Outcome – Belfast's built and natural heritage conserved

We have a new awareness of the Swifts

And we still have them!

Swifts Inspire- Ted Hughes.

• “They’ve made it again/ Which means the globe’s still working . . .”

Ongoing projects with business-“you need to inspire”

Crumlin Swift Tower -Stoneyford Engineering Ltd.

Translink – following on from Biodiversity Officer’s work

Stoneyford Engineering Ltd

Belfast – a Swift City

• RSPB is organising a Belfast wide Swift survey this year as part of a campaign to make Belfast a SWIFT CITY.

• (Haley Sherwin)

Parliament Buildings

• Northern Ireland Assembly are very keen to establish a colony from scratch with a sound system

• Ulster Museum • Don't push it!

SKAINOS Building

Partnership – 3 pronged attack!

Swifts inspire!

• Ted Hughes in his poem ‘Swifts’ describes their flight as-

• --“a bolas of three or four wire screams jockeying across each other on their switchback wheel of death.” –------- --

• “They swat past hard fletched, veer on the hard air, toss up over the roof and are gone again” .

Back to roam across the South African continent!

YES!