News

SER 2015 - Conference on Ecological Restoration

This week (23rd August), Associate Director Sarah Ross and Executive Director Penny Anderson represented PAA at ‘SER 2015’, the 6th World Conference on Ecological Restoration held in Manchester. The event is organised by The Society for Ecological Restoration, and this year had over 600 attendees representing 64 countries from across the world.

Sarah gave a talk on the restoration of damaged blanket bog, with a focus on PAA’s award winning contribution to the Sustainable Catchment Management Programme (SCaMP), a large-scale project based in North West England, funded by United Utilities, and designed to improve catchment and water quality through upland habitat restoration. A copy of Sarah’s presentation notes can be downloaded here.

Sarah also presented a poster to the conference, which focused on the restoration of Pulfin Bog, a reedbed habitat in East Yorkshire. In this project, PAA monitored the results of four different management regimes, aimed at increasing species diversity within the reedbed habitat. The site is managed by Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, with project funding from Natural England through a Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreement. A copy of the poster can be downloaded here.

Penny gave a talk in the symposium on Blanket Bog Restoration, looking at the extent and scale of restoration in the UK and Ireland over the last twenty years, and also co-hosted (with Moors for the Future) a field trip to Holme Moss, in the Peak District, to look at peatland restoration measures. The trip visited PAA’s 1980s BBC restoration area, and a rare clubmoss Lycopodium clavatum was found (Penny to check the ID).

More information on the work of The Society for Ecological Restoration can be found at their website www.ser.org

PAA offers a full range of consultant expertise relating to ecological restoration – please contact us for more information, or feel free to download one of our relevant fliers below:

Habitat Creation & Restoration
Habitat Management Planning
Moor & Heathland
Peatland Survey & Evaluation