The Green Review

Campus as a Learning Lab integrates academic research and teaching, using the university as a sandbox to explore opportunities and test new ideas, reflecting on our successes and failures. At UNB Saint John, the course SOCS4501 (held in the Fall Semester) allows students to implement their ideas to improve campus sustainability. This is the story of the Nestbox Project by Jennifer Moore.

It is becoming more and more common practice for heath-care professionals to prescribe nature exposure as a treatment to stress and other mental illnesses with increased exposure to nature being shown to reduce people developing poor mental states in the first place (Shanahan et al., 2019). Therefore, as the campus currently has a moderate amount of vegetation but very little animal habitat, the introduction of more biodiversity could act preventatively against mental burnout in the UNB community - while supporting local wildlife.

The boxes will be targeted towards the black-capped chickadee. Anecdotally, these birds are well known and well liked in general, with their songs are often reported as pleasant. Furthermore, they are common year-round in this region (Foote et al., 2020). Adding more cavities onto our campus will allow more birds to make their homes where they couldn’t before. This could help to bridge the potential gap in the population that might exist between the forest behind campus (containing the UNB trail system) and the Rockwood forest. These nestboxes have the additional benefit of highlighting the efforts UNB is making towards Sustainability, being a visual point of reference and increasing the attractiveness of the campus.

Jennifer began work on the Nestbox project in September 2021, as part of the SOCS4501 course. Through this program she learnt how to effectively reflect on a project, as well as gaining keen insight into how to effectively lead your own initiative. She coordinated between UNB Sustainability, Facilities Management and the Office of Experiental Education to design, build and install 2 Nestboxes, with more planned later in the year. As spring begins, lets keep an eye on these nestboxes at UNB Saint John, and see if we have any new residents.

What would you do as a Campus as a Learning Lab project?
Tell us or join SOCS4501 in the fall!

References

• Foote, J. R., D. J. Mennill, L. M. Ratcliffe, and S. M. Smith (2020). Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (A. F. Poole, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi-org.proxy.hil.unb.ca/10.2173/bow.bkcchi.01
• Shanahan, D. F., Astell–burt, T., Barber, E. A., Brymer, E., Cox, D. T. C., Dean, J., Depledge, M., Fuller, R. A., Hartig, T., Irvine, K. N., Jones, A., Kikillus, H., Lovell, R., Mitchell, R., Niemelä, J., Nieuwenhuijsen, M., Pretty, J., Townsend, M., Heezik, Y. van, … Gaston, K. J. (2019). Nature–based interventions for improving health and wellbeing: The purpose, the people and the outcomes. Sports, 7(6). https://doi.org/10.3390/sports7060141