Ryan Crowell,  The Barna Woods Volunteer

Ryan Crowell is an environmental educator originally from the United States who has been happily living in Galway for eleven years. He recently founded the rapidly growing “The Friends of Barna Woods & Rusheen Bay”, (less formally the Friends of Barna Woods) and was also a founding member of The Claddagh Beach Clean-Ups.

He feels that he was very blessed to have previously worked on many excellent  ecological and environmental institutions across the USA including Harvard University’s Arnold Arboretum, the Smith College Botanical Garden, the Massachusetts Audubon Society, the University of Hawaii, Honolulu Zoo and the Waikiki Aquarium.

His other community volunteerism in his adopted city for which he is rightly proud of includes the setting up of the Galway Slow Trad Sessions, the Seisiun Ceoil as Gaeilge, Galway Helping Hands, and the newly formed Galway American Society which was established to better connect the huge and wonderful Galway diaspora.

Through projects such as the National Park City initiative Ryan is looking forward to continuing his efforts to become a valuable asset to the communities of Galway city that he feels very fortunate to call “home”.