Maureen attends the EuroMAB conference in Sarlat la Canéda

On April 4-7, 2017 Maureen attended the EuroMAB conference in Sarlat la Canéda, France. EuroMAB is the network of European and North American biosphere reserves.

Pam Shaw invites people to contribute to a new Biosphere e-journal that is being published twice a year out of Vancouver Island University

At this event practitioners, policy makers and researchers joined to exchange experiences and re-commit to the Lima Action Plan adopted by the World Congress of Biosphere Reserves in March 2016.

Catherine Cibien (France-MAB) co-facilitates a session about how to network university courses in biosphere reserves

Maureen co-facilitated a session on university courses taught in biosphere reserves and presented in a session on scientific networking. She also learned a great deal from a session on Indigenous peoples in Biosphere Reserves that included presentations from Canada, the United States and Sweden.

EuroMAB was an opportunity to network with on-going partners and to meet new partners. We also learned through field-trips held through the region – this one involving a student project where students built bat shelters for vineyards to determine if they might reduce the need for pesticides when growing grapes! We also enjoyed sampling the local wine and food of the Dordogne region.

A student tells us about their “batman” project

EuroMAB takes place once every two years. In the meantime, we will continue to share good practices and good research while we support the mission of biosphere reserves in our home countries and across the oceans with our neighbours in the EuroMAB network.

The next EuroMAP will take place in Dublin in 2019.