User:Manxshearwater

Hi, I am user Manxshearwater (she/her) ! Welcome to my page. I am a biology student at the University of Oxford and previously interned at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science between June and August of 2024. In May 2025, I attended the Wikimedia Youth Conference, hosted in Prague, Czech Republic.

This user is a student.

This user is a participant in WikiProject Women in Red

This user lives in the United Kingdom.

♀

This contributor to Wikipedia is female.

This user is interested in the
Environment.

This user knows Hacerbics in real life.

Since late 2025, I have been co-organising the UK's first Wiki Science Competition since 2019 over on Wikimedia Commons, along with Lucy Moore. Entries to the competition closed at the beginning of this month and we are now in the judging stage. Good luck to everyone who entered!

Involvement in WikiProject Women in Red

Since late August 2024, I have been a participant in the Women in Red WikiProject and have also participated in a project to uncover the hidden female figures of Jesus College, Oxford! I'm interested in women's history and particularly by female academics, suffragists, and botanists of the 19th and (early) 20th century. Articles created so far:

Internship with ICCS (June - August 2024)

I completed an internship programme with the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science at the University of Oxford to examine and improve articles on Wikipedia that focus on biodiversity policy, such as biodiversity offsetting policies and no net loss policies. The covered two months between June and August 2024. Please reach out (via my talk page or email) with any questions on the project.

So that I could afford to participate in the project, I was provided with a Crankstart bursary to cover my living expenses. This is provided by the University's Crankstart Internship Programme because I am a Crankstart Scholar at the University. I do not receive payment from the ICCS.

Project achievements

Creation of a nature-positive article and improvement of the Wiktionary entry for nature-positive.
Creation of a no net loss environmental policy article.
Expansion of glossary of environmental science to include the terms biodiversity banking, biodiversity credit, biodiversity offset, no net loss, nature positive, mitigation hierarchy, and environmental impact assessment.
Updated sections on 'Requirement to offset biodiversity' and 'Offsetting in the UK' within the biodiversity offsetting article to reflect the global extent of policy requirements and terms used. Addition of sections on terminology and critique.
Improvement of the Economics of biodiversity article to fix issue of lack of references and expansion to describe the economic importance of biodiversity in greater depth.
Addition of "biodiversity offset" to Wiktionary
Expansion of the biodiversity banking article to include a section that discusses terminology and addition of a section on Colombia's habitat banks as another example of a country where this system has been implemented.
Improvement of the mitigation banking article to clarify the relationship of the concept with related ideas, including biodiversity offsetting and broader forms of biodiversity banking.
Updated the environmental mitigation article to reflect a more international view of environmental mitigation measures, beyond just the United States and covered important related topics like the mitigation hierarchy.

Events attended

In August 2025, I attended in-person sessions in Birmingham as part of Wikimedia UK's 2025 Train the Trainer programme.
In May 2025, I attended the Wikimedia Youth Conference, hosted in Prague, Czech Republic thanks to a scholarship from the Wikimedia Foundation. This was my first (Wiki) conference! To celebrate my time in Prague, I created this article: Franciscan Garden, Prague.
In July 2024, I attended an informal London meetup.

Project achievements

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