Aims & Objectives

EuCAN’s aims are:

to encourage as many people as possible of all ages and from all walks of life to become involved with practical environmental conservation in their own areas as volunteers, trainees or professionals.
to encourage and facilitate cultural exchange and the sharing of environmental ideas and skills between the UK and other countries (particularly within the European Union), and to promote practical conservation volunteering within the UK and abroad. Through our links with conservation organisations, national parks and nature reserves in other countries of the EU we enable groups of UK citizens to travel (by train, minibus or boat – this is a no-fly operation) to work with these partners to carry out practical conservation management or species monitoring and to attract local people to join them as volunteers. We are developing green therapy projects in the UK to involve a wider range of people in habitat conservation.
to promote the conservation of the physical and natural environment by promoting biodiversity.
to encourage sustainable development in the rural economy through environmentally sensitive farming and food production. Through our new traineeship scheme, we aim to develop far greater involvement with sustainable agricultural and food-producing enterprises in our partner countries as we believe that only through these can nature conservation be viable in the long term. We also believe that there are likely to be better prospects for employment (or self-employment) for our participants in this area of interface between High Nature Value farming and wildlife conservation.
to promote the research and development of systems of conservation management and agriculture which are both economically viable and environmentally sustainable.
to provide education and training related to these activities and to disseminate relevant information and guidance to the public at large.

We hope the EuCAN project will lead to a productive exchange of ideas, expertise and resources with the accompanying social, cultural and political benefits at the community level. Our participants acquire a much better understanding of nature conservation on a European scale as well as training in survey skills, species identification and the use of power tools and handtools. Through our placements, our participants become better equipped in the increasingly competitive jobs market in this field.