Birds in education: innovative learning methods for capacity building in nature conservation

The role of volunteer birdwatchers in bird censuses across the world is crucial to acquire data for science and conservation, and people with different skill specializations and motivations are engaged as citizen scientists. Bird species richness is positively related to life-satisfaction across Europe, while this association doesn’t exist in other wildlife groups. Therefore, birds seem to be particularly captivating for recruiting people to environmental monitoring and nature conservation efforts. The WildSkills EU Erasmus+ project identified a discrepancy at the European level between higher education training and the needs of the labour market in the field of environmental monitoring and nature conservation. To address this skills gap, a collaboration between professionals from European nongovernmental organizations and higher education institutions was set up to develop innovative and accessible distance learning. The project will use a virtual learning environment that combines the use of physical equipment and tools with webinars and livestream technologies, and periods of transnational mobility, to provide, assess, accredit, and support the acquisition of new knowledge. The Birds in Education course is part of the learning materials of the WildSkills EU project. This course will explore (1) the personal motivations for, and the implications to science and society, of our awareness of birds, (2) notions of bird conservation in the European context, (3) the basics of bird identification, (4) how to use birds as environmental education tools, and (5) digital tools for bird identification and citizen science. The course will be tested by higher education students from different backgrounds, aimed at developing skills for the nature conservation sector, and by professionals of the education sector. In the end, this course will contribute to capacity building and to citizen science and has the potential of increasing the public engagement in bird counts, which represents a growing need of many bird conservation organizations.