Nature After Minerals at the SER Conference

NAM programme manager speaks at Society for Ecological Restoration’s European Conference in Finland

NATURE After Minerals’ programme Manager, Carolyn Jewell (pictured), recently joined colleagues from the RSPB’s Conservation Science team to attend and speak at the European Chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration (SER) 9th European Conference in Oulu, Finland.

The conference consisted of four days of parallel sessions and a day of site visits, all focused around ecological restoration, with one session devoted to minerals restoration, thanks to a proposal submitted by NAM/RESTORE in conjunction with the HeidelbergCement/Birdlife project partnership co-ordinator.

Within the minerals session, RESTORE dominated the morning, with three talks from the RSPB and RESTORE’s German partner, ILS, looking at the ecosystem services part of the project, detailing some of methodology employed and outlining the initial results from the ENCI quarry case study in the Netherlands and the RSPB’s own Middleton Lakes reserve.

Carolyn Jewell (pictured) then gave a presentation on the potential of mineral site restoration to assist with the attainment of EU 2020 biodiversity targets, using the UK as an example, and highlighted some of the current barriers to achieving this potential.

Through a demonstration of working in partnership, the outputs of the RESTORE project were showcased. This model of industry, local government, NGOs and statutory agencies liaison was of particular interest to delegates from as far afield as the US and Australia.

The SER global conference will take place the UK in 2015 and NAM is already working with the organizers to promote another minerals restoration session, with the aim of bringing academics and practitioners closer together.