Blueprint - Volunteer-led activities for wetland establishment

The impact of the human population on the planet has resulted in multiple environmental and climate challenges, and to address these, large-scale transformational change within multiple sectors is urgently required. Accelerating nature restoration is a crucial element of this change in which communities have the capacity to play a key role through their dedication, sense of ownership and long-term focus. However, examples of successful community-led or ‘bottom-up’ restoration projects, in which communities are the architects of the action - as opposed to the recipients of it – are not well documented. This blueprint describes a bottom-up approach to nature restoration that has been extremely successful at Harper’s Island Wetlands, Co. Cork, Ireland.