Bio-Blitz Partnership scoops prestigious Green Life Award

Collaborative working won the day as a six organisation partnership carried off first prize in Leicester’s Green Life Awards, held on 1st December at the city’s New Walk Museum. “Bio Blitz”, the 24 hour spectacular that recorded and catalogued every form of wildlife at Watermead in May last year, picked up the prestigious Green Life Award.

Bio-Blitz brought together Leicester City Council, Groundwork Leicester & Leicestershire, Stepping Stones, Leicestershire County Council, The Wildlife Trust and the BBC to raise awareness about biodiversity at a local level. Local people and professionals participated in surveys and recorded wildlife resulting in 653 species being recorded, including several new species of insect for the County. Bio-Blitz also took the award for Best Environmental Contribution by a Not-for-Profit Organisation.

Helen O’Brien from Leicester City Council who collected the award along with Gavin Fletcher from Groundwork, said: “We are very pleased to have won the Green Life Award and the Not For Profit award against some very strong opposition. This is the first time the top award has been given for nature conservation or bio-diversity and is a great achievement and an example of how
well the partnership organisations worked together and encouraged nearly 2000 people to get involved and take part in the Bio Blitz event.”

Other category winners and runners up can be downloaded here.

This was the sixth year of the Leicester Green Life awards and they have become firmly established as a means of identifying the city’s “green champions”. Managed by Leicester’s Environment Partnership Board, and sponsored by the Centre for Comparative Housing Research at DeMontfort University, the awards are an annual celebration event that enable a wide range of individuals and organisations to obtain recognition for their good practice in the delivery of environmental projects during the previous twelve months.

Councillor Sarah Russell, Chair of the Environment Partnership Board, said the awards provided: “A fabulous showcase to celebrate the hard work and success of local communities, businesses and projects in protecting and improving our local environment.”

Awards sponsor, Dr Tim Brown, Director of the Centre for Comparative Housing Research at De Montfort University said: “We were delighted to sponsor the Leicester Green Life Awards. They brought forward some great examples of environmental best practice in the city and the winners achieved a very high standard.”

Click here for further information about the Green Life Awards.

Contact:
Neil Wiseman, email: [email protected]
Chris Shaw, email: [email protected]