Understanding Predation - Questionnaire closes on 31 July

The Questionnaire

The Understanding Predation project aims to capture the views of as many people as possible. While the project will welcome responses from organisations, it is personal views that count most. The project wants to hear what individuals think, not just what organisations would like their people to think!

Have you completed a questionnaire yet, and have you done enough to draw the attention of colleagues, members and/or supporters to the opportunity that the questionnaire offers people to express their views?  The questionnaire responses will influence the final report from the project.

Understanding Predation – Information at a glance
Project webpage	http://goo.gl/Z5L0Hw
Project Blog	http://goo.gl/tgUPtP
Questionnaire – Online version (for submission of response)	https://goo.gl/Kv6Cor
Questionnaire – pdf version (to preview the questions)	http://goo.gl/a30c0x
End of online questionnaire Completion of workshops	31st July 2015
Project Review Seminars	27th October – Perth 3rd November – Inverness 12th November - Edinburgh

Peatland Action - Reborn

The Scottish Government has allocated Peatland ACTION a further £3 m to spend on peatland restoration this year. See Scottish Government news release 9 June 2015 'Climate change action heats up'.

Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) was allocated £5 million to spend on:

• restoring and managing peatlands to maintain carbon stores and encourage carbon sequestration restore peatland ecosystem functions; 
• enhancing ecosystem resilience to climate change; and 
• building peatland restoration capacity and understanding amongst land managers, contractors, advisors and the public. 

The Peatland ACTION project was established to respond to this challenge in the last financial year, and work was funded across 107 sites throughout Scotland.  Building on this success, the allocation of a further £3m, to spend before the end of March 2016, will allow the Peatland ACTION project to extend the amount of restoration work that can be carried out.

Applications for Funding

Details about how to apply for funding for peatland restoration work are available from the Peatland ACTION part of the SNH website.  The closing date for applications is 17 August - if this is of interest you need to act now.

Demonstration Events

I am working with the Project to the Peatland Project Officers who are in post around the country to set up Demonstration Events.  The programme of events is starting this month and will run into the autumn.  Anyone interested in attending an event can contact me so that I can put them in touch with the appropriate Project Officer.

Sharing Good Practice event: Making soils count

Making soils count - Wednesday 9th September 2015, Battleby Centre, Perth

This Sharing Good Practice (SGP) event forms part of a programme of activities under the Scotland partnership for promotion of UN International Year of Soils 2015 (IYS2015). IYS2015 provides an opportunity to take stock and reflect on examples of sustainable soil management that exist in Scotland and where gaps in information and resources occurs.

This event is organised by Scottish Natural Heritage in partnership with Scottish Environment Protection Agency, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Field Studies Council, British Geological Survey, The James Hutton Institute, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Scottish Rural College and Cifal Scotland.

SGP events are fully participatory events where participants can learn about and share practical issues relevant to their own particular roles and activities and discuss their resource requirements and help to identify resource gaps. This event will specifically cover awareness of soil issues and demonstrate the breadth of information and tools available. The event is aimed at ‘those who have responsibility for soil and its sustainable management in Scotland’. In particular - land managers, advisors, researchers, public agencies and NGO’s. 

Event Objectives: 

• To promote awareness of soil issues
• To provide a path to the breadth of information and tools available to understand, monitor and manage soils by range of contributing organisations
• An opportunity to take stock and reflect on examples of sustainable soil management that exist in Scotland

The event flyer and booking form are available on the SNH website.

Understanding Predation Project - a quick update

The Understanding Predation project is in full swing. Over 300 questionnaires have been received although there is still plenty of time for more questionnaires to be submitted.  The workshops are in full swing and these will continue until the end of July.  The bibliography for the final report has been prepared, and this will be published on the Project’s webpage, next week, along with an explanatory post on the Project's blog.

A full update on the progress of the Project will be submitted to the Steering Group, next week, and the Group will be asked to confirm that this satisfies the requirements of the second milestone.

All members of the Moorland Forum are asked to keep their own members and supporters up to date with progress through their own networks.  An outline briefing will be prepared that Forum members may wish to adapt for their own use.

I will be at the Scottish Game Fair for the next three days, along with several other members of the Forum and this will provide an opportunity to discuss the project.  A postcard promoting the project has been printed so that web & blog details for the project can be given easily to anyone who shows an interest.

Tenant Farming Advisor

Rural Affairs Secretary, Richard Lochhead, has appointed Andrew Thin as Scotland’s new independent advisor on tenant farming.

The Scottish Government's news release has more details and quotes.

Land Use Strategy Annual Stakeholder Event – 11 June 2015

You are invited to attend this year’s annual Land Use Strategy stakeholder event on 11 June at SNH Battleby, Perth.  Please register early as places are limited.

The event will focus on the recently concluded Land Use Strategy Regional Pilot projects in Aberdeenshire and Scottish Borders. 

Registration for the event is on Eventbrite – please follow the link here

Please note that this is a half day event from 10 am – 2:30.

Tea and coffee will be served from 10 – 10:30 and lunch will be provided. If you have any special requirements please let me know.

I look forward to seeing you at the event.

Best regardS

Linda

Linda Gateley

Scottish Government, Land Use & Biodiversity Team, Directorate for Environment and Forestry,

1C North, Victoria Quay, EH6 6QQ             0131 244 7968              website: Land Use Strategy

Molinia Conference, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire: 14-16 September 2015

Molinia on Marsden Moor

Although Huddersfield may be a distance from Scotland, this conference will be applicable to everyone who wants to know more about Molinia across the UK.  I will be attending in my Heather Trust capacity, but I circulate details in case some Forum members would also like to attend, or at least be aware of it.

The full title of this conference is: "Molinia caerulea on upland peat in the UK: history, dependencies and the role of intervention in achieving conservation goals".

From the flyer for the conference:

"Peat covers much of the flat or gently sloping uplands of the UK, forming blanket mire that can host a number of vegetation types. The type favoured by conservationists, and considered to be associated with the greatest rate of peat formation, involves cotton-grass (Eriophorum) species, ericaceous shrubs and Sphagnum mosses. In practice, this is lacking over large areas of upland where it might be expected, its place being taken by very dominant Purple moor-grass Molinia caerulea. Conservation bodies expend much effort in trying to replace Molinia with the more desirable species and conservation objectives are set with this in mind. This conference examines the place of Molinia caerulea in UK plant communities, factors affecting its growth and experiments looking at ways of adding greater diversity where appropriate. The aim is to gain a clearer understanding, through discussion, of what types of conservation objective should be applied and how to achieve them.

The conference will take place in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, 14-16 September 2015 and will contain two days of presentations and discussion followed by a field trip on Day 3 to look at diversification experiments set up in dominant Molinia on the Marsden Moor Estate. We are able to keep the conference fee low due to generous support from Natural England and the International Peat Society."

I can vouch for Marsden Moor being a good venue for the field visit.  The Heather Trust ran a demonstration project for Defra at Marsden for three years from 2003, and I remember walking over the part of the moor shown in the photograph.  At the time, it had a complete coverage of molinia tussocks and it was hard walking.  I suspect it has not changed a lot since.

For more detail about the conference see the Marsden Moor Estate website.