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Pollination Guelph is launching its community grants program for the 2021 pollination season.
The focus areas of this year’s project is planting and maintaining pollinator habitats, educating members of the community about pollinators and conservation, in addition to conducting research on pollinators.
Clare Irwin, co-chair of Pollination Guelph, said the organization is working a lot on encouraging and promoting the planting of pollinator habitats.
“Our focus at the moment is to be supporting and encouraging others to plant pollinator habitat,” Irwin said. “To get as many people as possible to understand the importance of pollinators and to include at least some pollinator-friendly plants in their gardens or their properties or whatever it is that they're wanting to put plants into.”
The grants of $1,000 are available to environmental groups, health care facilities, community gardens, schools, researchers, educators and non-profit groups who are looking to make a difference by protecting pollinators, like bees and butterflies.
“We have an application form online to ask questions about the project that (the applicants are) doing,” Irwin said. “Priority is given to new projects that are local and contribute again to not only getting habitat built but also getting it installed in places where the general public can see it so that it's a form of public education about the importance of pollinators and how to create habitats for them.”
Irwin said the pandemic made it hard for some recipients of last year’s grant program to fully use the funding provided.
“They were all non-profit groups mostly relying on volunteers so many of them were unable to actually complete their projects, because of the COVID restrictions,” Irwin said. “They will be working on those again to finish those off this year we hope.”
Irwin said she feels that these projects are crucial to protecting native bees.
“Butterflies are also helpful and beetles,” Irwin said. “But native bees are the ones that we have focused because the numbers of those, in many cases seem to be declining for various reasons - one of which is known to be a lack of habitat for places where they can find food, where they can make a nest, or where they can stay over winter.
“All of those things are contributing to declining numbers in many parts of the world of pollinating insects, and in particular the bees.”
The application deadline is Wednesday, March 31, and details can be found here.
