Society for Ecological Restoration Europe (SERE) Conference

Estonia, August 2024

We were so lucky to be able to go to this conference in Estonia in August this year. We took one of our Ambassadors with us and managed to get a number of speaking slots including a special session on floodplain meadows. We presented work on soil carbon, policy in the UK, two restoration case studies and historic research. We also had two posters there: one on UK landuse and the other on the use of the arts in our project. There were so many brilliant talks over the 4 days of the conference, along with a fabulous site visit to an extensive area of floodplain meadow in the Alma Pedja reserve.

Floodplain meadows in Estonia

Estonia has an Action Plan for Semi Natural Grassland produced by the Estonian Environment Board There were 1.5 million hectares of semi-natural grassland 100 years ago (which equated to 40% of all land) and fortunately the Estonian Government has recognised the value of these grasslands before they all disappear. Through the Environmental Investment Centre and with core financing from the EU LIFE programme they have developed the plan to maintain existing and restore more grassland. They already have 42400 ha in conservation management and a target of 50000 ha by 2027. Parallel funding is being made available to deliver the work.

Managing the Alam-Pedja Nature Reserve

We heard a brilliant talk by Viljar Ilves about the management of this reserve and a field tour. Viljar is a local farmer, and works for Lynxland NGO as well. Its amazing how much similarity there is over management issues. We have reproduced most of his talk here, but some key things to highlight are:

Late mowing time due to ground nesting birds means hay is poor quality, it is a waste of fuel and results in a decline in plant diversity leading to negative impacts on bird populations.
Regulations made from a distance do not really help.
Historically the meadows were cut just as fast as now, but used more people and less efficient equipment. However, modern equipment should be used wisely.
The story of Gladiolus imbricatus shows that the later mowing reduced the population of this rare plant, where late mowing was stipulated to give it time to set seed. Moving to an earlier mowing regime has increased the population.
The amazing drone picture on slide 11 shows the naturally functioning river valley, which has never been modified, with meadows that work around it.

Left: Seedheads of Gladiolus imbricatus (Ann Cantrell). Right: 800 ha of floodplain meadow in the Alam-Pedja nature reserve being managed by mowing and grazing with 250 Scottish highland cattle. Management challenges include remotely enforced regulation, inflexibility in farm schemes, and little consideration of farmer knowledge, opinions and needs.

*This river has never been modified, dredged, embanked or otherwise adjusted for human needs. The meadows work alongside it.*

One of the overriding messages from the conference was that we are all dealing with very similar problems in terms of grassland restoration (see Yves Blog here). There are a number of projects where research is focusing restoration activity and policy and where academics are working with practitioners and Governments. However this is not always the case and it is not always as effective as we would like.

The other European countries are now addressing the European Nature Restoration Law. This is requiring all countries to develop national restoration plans. There is a plan for a new European Knowledge Network Hub that links academics, practitioners and NGO’s, to ensure lessons are shared and learned. There was a recognition that the bottle neck for restoration isn’t ecological knowledge. There is a call to increase restoration facilitators (perhaps through groups like farmer clusters?). There is also quite a bit of work looking at training practitioners and landowners in order to enable such a major scaling up of restoration activity.

The European Nature Restoration Law is being seen alongside the UN Decade of Ecosystem restoration (restorationdecade@un.org) and the World Bank are looking at funding mechanisms and financial instruments that could help. We need to be looking to Europe to learn what they are finding and to share what we are doing.

To that end, we are looking at applying for a Coordination and support action (CSA) that improves cooperation between legal entities from the EU and associated countries to strengthen the European Research Area including, for example, standardisation, dissemination, awareness-raising, communication and networking activities, policy dialogues, mutual learning or studies. The EU funding covers up to 100% of the project costs. If anyone is interested in being part of this, please let us know.

We also managed to sneak a look at the Tartu Botanic Gardens, where we found a great display of native habitats.