Oliver discusses community transformation and adaptation in response to the climate emergency

00:01 All right. Hi, Oliver. How's it going?

00:05 It's going great.

00:06 Good. Good to see you.

00:09 I'm glad to be here.

00:10 Yeah. So I was just hoping that you could share with the audience your name, where you went to school, and where you're currently living.

00:20 Yeah. So I'm Oliver. I went to the University of Michigan. Graduated 2024, long time ago now, but I'm currently living in Ann Arbor. Been here for the past 15 years, and, yeah, loving it.

00:35 Yeah. Awesome. So you're with us here today because you were helpful in making a foundational community change within your community. And so I was wondering if you could share where that community is and just kind of get started with the story of how you leverage behavior change with members of the community to instill these changes.

00:59 Yeah. So currently I'm on the chair for the Washtenaw Wildlife Restoration Group. We started in early 2022, working closely with the Ann Arbor Parks and Recreation, providing opportunities for community members to engage, to learn, most importantly, to volunteer with us. So we started out hosting weekly events in which anyone could participate and come to help us remove invasive species from Ann Arbor's many parks and nature preserves. So, yeah, our sessions always started with kind of a 15 minute knowledge session in which participants learned a little bit about the harmful effects of invasives, how they can be more mindful in their day to day life, and really what we were going to be doing that day in terms of volunteering and working in the parks. But this initiative is all about wildlife conservation, but we focus mainly on the fauna living and native and living in Michigan and Ann Arbor. Over time, humans have brought a ton of invasive species to Michigan, which, when left alone, can cause, you know, a ton of harm. Not just the. Not just to the environment, but also harm to us as well. But with Ann Arbor, the crazy fact that I learned many years ago was the fact that Ann Arbor is home to more than 160 parks, nature preserves, and conservation areas.

02:30 Oh, wow.

02:31 Which is a lot more than most people think, especially not such a big place. And so we really saw an increasing need for our program in order to protect kind of this ecosystem that we have. Since then, we've grown to include dedicated groups and communities who are committed to one site and a shared vision. They're a little bit more independent from our program, but they started with us, and we still do check ins, and we found that after a while, these groups would meet up to work on their projects without us as mediators.

03:05 Yeah. Could you. Could you share a little bit about what the checkups look like and maybe a little bit about the specific behavior change that you saw was required to get community members engaged and enthusiastic about helping with the invasive species initiative.

03:25 Yeah, so I would say we actually found that people were pretty keen to get out there. I think we've grown to include a lot more people. But when we started we focused mainly on communities like around schools and other places. And we found that a lot of people were really excited to help, to contribute and we found a lot of families would come out, set a good example for kids and so on. But I will say in terms of behavior change that we've seen since people have participated in the program, I think a lot of people have. What's the word? Have become. Have developed a better relationship with nature and more importantly, better practices to preserve it. So we've seen a lot of people become bigger advocates for conservation and restoration. A lot of people that we've worked with have gone on to work with similar programs doing, you know, this kind of a lot of the similar things as well as supporting legislation and changes both local and further out and kind of help support what we're preaching.

04:45 Yeah, that's incredible. That's a great program you all have started. And I'm just curious because there are a lot of similar initiatives, especially in approaching the new year as we head to 2031 that are becoming to gain a little bit more traction, similar ones that are focused on community based initiatives and what we've come to known as citizen meetings and environmental eco groups. And I was just wondering, like what is the biggest challenge that you guys had in creating a community, a broad community engagement around taking the invasive species out of the community that have been harmful and the other things that I know your organization has done. What has been one of the biggest challenges with that and with that, what do you think is the lesson that can be taken away for those who are starting similar initiatives?

05:47 Yeah, well, I think off the biggest advice was we first kind of started this program. We didn't kind of envision or think about how far it could take us. But everyone in our involved in our program has come to better understand kind of the need for what we're doing. I think one of the bigger challenges was when we transitioned to kind of having these dedicated groups who were less involved with us that we had to do these check ins with. Kind of as our program kind of gained some traction, we looked into ways we could better, better promote behavior change. And that's kind of when we did stumble into this. Kurt Lewin's team based model and eco teams and that kind of stuff. So kind of just finding ways, how do we kind of engage these people and give them the information they need while also providing a way or a system in which they can kind of take initiative and not feel like they're only just following us as, like, knowledge leaders, but they're really making a difference on their own kind of volition.

07:03 Yeah. That's incredible. Thank you. I appreciate it. I look forward to hearing more about what your group continues to do. And on behalf of a community member in the area, I thank you for the work you guys are doing.

07:18 I appreciate it.

07:20 All right, Bye.

07:21 Take care.