UK: London to Host ABPmer Conference on Managed Realignment

The 2nd ABPmer conference on Managed Realignment, entitled ‘Coastal Habitat Creation: Are We Delivering?‘, will be held on 20 November 2013 at One Great George Street, London. 

This conference will focus on the biggest challenges being faced by those working on coastal habitat creation projects across the UK and Europe, namely:

– How schemes are designed to meet the requirements of national and EC legislation, especially the Birds, Habitats and Water Framework Directives, and

– How the newly created habitats, and the species they support, are monitored and assessed against their targets and then integrated into the Natura 2000 network, where appropriate.

Presentations will include the policy context, the ecological issues and potential delivery solutions.

Colin Scott, habitat creation specialist at ABPmer, said: “The theme for this conference addresses two major discussion points that were raised by delegates at the last ABPmer Managed Realignment event in 2010. These are issues that we all continue to encounter but are also subjects that we have learned a lot about over the last three years.

“The challenges of designing and monitoring new coastal habitats are greatly influenced by the fact that these new environments continue to mature, accrete and change from the moment of their creation. This means that they don’t really achieve a distinct ‘final’ ecological state and so, for example, it is difficult to create sustainable mudflat or to judge objectively when a saltmarsh has reached an ecological/functional value that is equivalent to habitats which have been lost elsewhere. This raises questions about what can and can’t be achieved (and over what timeframes) in terms of habitat creation when set against a project’s objectives.

“The purpose of this event is to bring together regulators, practitioners and developers to talk about how coastal habitat creation schemes are performing against their objectives, especially the requirements of the Habitats Regulations, with a view to moving towards agreeing what delivery means.”

[mappress]

Press Release, January 25, 2013