Plant health expert Dr David Slawson, joins the OPAL team from the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera), where he had been leading public engagement work and acting as an official advisor to Government on issues such as Chalara ash dieback and Phytophthora ramorum.
He replaces Dr Linda Davies, who masterminded the creation of OPAL and led it for six years before stepping down at the end of 2013, shortly after securing a new three-year grant from the Big Lottery Fund.
The £3 million funding is enabling OPAL to team up with leading universities, museums and wildlife organisations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as continuing its work with high profile partners in England.
The aim is to help even more communities to engage with nature in their neighbourhoods and learn about biodiversity and pollution, as well as generating valuable scientific data about environmental quality across the UK.
Announcing the grant, Peter Ainsworth, Chair of the Big Lottery Fund, said: “It is well recognised that we as a society are becoming less connected to the natural environment. More and more people live in cities.
“This disconnection is causing well documented negative impacts, including loss of physical and mental well-being, and a loss of skills, knowledge and understanding related to the environment. The grant to OPAL aims to redress the balance, enabling people across the country to get close to the wonders of the natural world which sustains us all.”
As spring arrives and enthusiasm for exploring the great outdoors increases, the OPAL team is now preparing to officially roll-out across the UK, with the new group of partner organisations due to be announced shortly and a revamped website set to launch in the next few weeks.
“Having won the £3 million Big Lottery Fund grant to extend OPAL to the rest of the UK, the small OPAL team must build relations with a new group of partners to successfully deliver this project,” Dr Slawson said. “We recently met all the new partners and the energy and enthusiasm that they demonstrated makes me confident that this is the start of something special.”
However, while Dr Slawson is excited about the challenges in the immediate future, he is also looking further ahead.
“I must make it my mission to secure our long-term future,” he said. “My predecessor Dr Davies started something special when she developed the OPAL concept and the baton has now passed to me to make it sustainable.”
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