Our webinars
We have recently changed the set up for our webinars, they are free to all those who are from member organisations of the EAI section and the link can be obtained from [email protected] or if you are a non-member you can book via eventbrite and the cost will be £50 per webinar. If you would like to become a member you can further information here and also contact [email protected]
Latest Webinars
Tuesday 5th December 2023 12.00
Assessing social impacts of European Protected Areas – This will be an interractive event with the participants
Social impact assessments for protected areas have increased in popularity the past years. These assessments can assist practitioners in making informed decisions and maximize nature’s benefits to people while also making sure that key biodiversity conservation targets are achieved. In this webinar, we will explore ways of conducting social impact assessments for protected areas. Prof Nikoleta Jones from the University of Warwick will describe a step-by-step approach discussing how these assessments can be designed and implemented effectively. This will be done in an interactive way, guided by participants’ input during the webinar. Recent results of social impact assessments from Sweden, Estonia and the UK will also be presented showcasing the usefulness of collecting social data to improve the effectiveness of protected areas.
Brief bio:
Dr Nikoleta Jones is an Associate Professor at the Institute for Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick. Her expertise lies within the field of environmental policy and governance with a specific focus on protected areas and climate change. She uses mixed methods with a particular interest in behavioural predictive models incorporating spatial and temporal dimensions. She is currently leading the project FIDELIO funded by the European Research Council (www.warwick.ac.uk/fidelio) exploring social impacts and public support for European Protected Areas.
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Transforming Travel: Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park Authority’s Strategy to Reduce Transport Emissions
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority’s recently published ‘Sustainable Travel and Modal Shift’ report proposes a strategy to help the park deliver its net zero ambitions. As the biggest single contributor towards park-wide emissions, the national park authority recognises the need to reduce the carbon footprint of travel to and around the park, in addition to improving transport options for people living, working and visiting the area.
In this webinar, you will hear from John Pinkard of Ansons Consulting, who led the development of the sustainable travel and modal shift strategy. He will describe some of the most significant travel-related challenges encountered in the park, and explain how the strategy aims to address them. You will also hear from Kenny Auld at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park Authority, who will discuss the implementation of the strategy from the perspective of the park authority.
Speakers will be:
John Pinkard is the founder and Managing Director of Ansons Consulting, a company that specialises in understanding and influencing travel behaviour, and particularly, in reducing the impact of travel and transport. With his 25+ year record of successfully delivering consultancy projects, John is a trusted advisor to public, private and third-sector clients. His multifaceted expertise includes undertaking transport research and stakeholder engagement, and crafting, executing, and evaluating transport strategies.
As Head of Visitor Services, Kenny Auld is able to use his experience and passion for partnership working across visitor management, health improvement, green jobs and environmental protection and enhancement. Sustainable Transport has emerged as a key area of work, with Kenny leading the strategic thinking and interrogation of emerging national policies to ensure the pressures and opportunities around rural visitor hotspots are part of the national shift away from car dependency. Kenny also sits as a Board Member of Europarc Atlantic Isles.
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Wednesday 21st february at 12.00
The digital direction of peatland restoration: automation and digital twins
The UK rapidly needs to upscale its peatland restoration efforts to meet climate change and biodiversity targets. A major part of the solution lies in increased financing, but a complementary solution is for restoration practitioners to embrace digital technologies to improve restoration efficiencies. Using remote sensing data and custom-built GIS models/scripts, it is now possible to automatically map erosional peatland features, such as hagg edges, in seconds/minutes compared to days/weeks of manual work. Combining automated outputs with digital twins then allows for an immersive quality checking process and restoration interventions to be decided on from the desk rather than via labour-intensive field surveys.
The North Pennines National Landscape is the second largest of the 38 National Landscapes (previously known as Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, AONBs) in England and Wales, containing approximately 900 km2 of peatland which has been historically drained and degraded. The North Pennines National Landscape team has been successfully restoring these peatlands since 2006.
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Listen to the past webinars
Tuesday 21st November at 12.00
Understanding Biodiversity Credits
Manesh Lacoul Global Co-ordinator Biodiversity Credit Alliance
A biodiversity credit market is in the early stages of being established. This market needs to be efficient and robust to align private sector finance with nature positive goals and achieve just and equitable outcomes. Although biodiversity credits are seen as promising, there are a variety of issues that need to be resolved to ensure a viable, transparent and accountable market.
The Biodiversity Credit Alliance (BCA) exists to provide guidance for the establishment of a credible and scalable market that stands up to the scrutiny of multiple stakeholders. Key among them are Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities at the frontline of the biodiversity crisis. BCA is working together with the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities to ensure strong foundations and principles exist and can be applied by all market participants going forward. BCA has established Working Groups to define and develop relevant concepts to best assist the formulation of a transparent and trusted market. Some ongoing workstreams are “Definition of biodiversity credit”, “Demand side sources and motivation for biodiversity credits – preliminary overview”, “Review mechanisms for supply-side quality and integrity”, and “Biodiversity Credit Alliance: Digital Framework”.
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MOBILE BIG DATA FOR UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE IN NATURE
Tuuli Toivonen is a geographer and a professor of geoinformatics leading the multidisciplinary Digital Geography Lab. Her research explores the possibilities of using novel (big/open) data sources and spatial analyses to support environmental and sustainable land use planning and decision-making. She has studied the use of national parks and other green areas since 2014.
Her presentation Using Mobile Big Data for Understanding People in Nature will explore the possibilities of using various mobile big data sources (such as mobile phone data and social media data) for understanding where and when people visit nature, who they are and what do they prefer. The talk presents some key findings of two projects: Social Media Data for Conservation Science (SOMECON, 2016-2021) and Mobile Big Data for Understanding People in Nature (MOBICON, 2022-2026).
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Mitigation, nature inclusive design and Compensation measures for Coastal wind farms – lessons from Netherlands – Tuesday 26th September 2023 at 12.00
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Exploring the need to diversify the protected Landscapes workforce and governance – Thursday 30th March at 12.15
Protected landscapes have an imperitive to diversify not only its visitor profile but probably to achieve this, its workforce and governace to reflect the UK population. This webinar will be the first steps in looking at what needs to be done and will showcase how the voluntary sector through Wildlife and Countryside link have progressed, and how Loch Lommond NP has approached governance.
Chair – Kenny Auld – Head of Visitor Services Loch Lomond and Trossachs NP
Speakers were:
Eleanor Ward is the Policy Officer at Wildlife and Countryside Link,
Zain Sehgal sits on the board of trustees for Boots & Beards as a treasurer and on the board of Loch Lomond & Trossachs National Park in shadowing capacity. .
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Diversity in Park Catergories – Thursday 26th January
The overall concept of the webinar is to look at the use of different designations for protected landscapes such as World Heritage status, Regional Parks, Geoparks and the benifits or not of these designations
Nordic-Baltic case: Kristian Bjørnstad, Managing Director of Norwegian Parks Association will look at this from a Norwegian, Nordic and European level perspective
UK case:Lake District World Heritage Site Marie Lock will talk about the benefits and challanges of being a National Park and World Heritage site and to balance protecting special qualities of the National Park and the attributes of Outstanding Universal Values of World Heritage Sites and potential sensitivities around this.
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Creative ways of engaging with visitors in Protected Landscapes – Tuesday 30st January 
Liz Pugh, Creative Producer – Walk the Plank, will talk about the impact of the company’s recent project, Green Space Dark Skies, commissioned for Unboxed2022: creativity across the UK, which engaged thousands of people through participation in large scale artworks in national parks and AONB’s across the four nations. The finale was screened as part of a BBC Countryfile one hour special, viewable via I-Player here – do watch in advance if you missed the original broadcast, which was seen by 5.3 million people. Liz will share some of the outcomes, along with some of the research from the project’s Green Space Stories platform; and explore the legacy of the project in some of the 21 locations.Parks unlocked; Innovative Financing to Transform Parks across Europe.
Kirstie Smith Marketing Manager for Forestry England range of creative apps and activities to encourage a diverse range of people to use and explore Forest.
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Low Carbon Lake District -carbon budget and accounting methodology and practical application- Friday 29th April 2022
Since 2008, the Lake District National Park Partnership has pioneered the National Park’s climate action, through the Low Carbon Lake District project. Hear about how the Partnership developed its carbon budget baseline and reduction pathways for Net Zero. As well as how this has inspired and contributed to developing a carbon budget for Cumbria, carbon emission pathway reduction targets for the National Park and how it has supported carbon budgeting for other UK National Parks.
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Airborne LiDAR use in peatland restoration – Thursday 9th June 2022
The North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is the second largest of the 46 AONBs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, containing approximately 900 km2 of peatland which has historically been drained and degraded. Restoration planning typically involves surveying large areas of peatland on foot, but this approach is not always practical or time efficient given the scale of the problem. An alternative method to map peatland features is to use airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data.
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Taking a look at Volunteering in proteceted areas – Tuesday 8th March 2022
This webinar looked at different ways in engaging volunteers in the management of proteceted areas in Estonia and the UK.
The speakers were be:
- Kadri Aller from Estonian Fund for Nature
- Daniel Greenwood – Volunteer Development Officer for the South Downs National Park
- Jim Hardcastle is the manager of the Mendip Hills AONB Unit
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Inventive Communications – For the love of peat: Inspiring people to care for blanket bogs 28th February 2022
This webinar explored ways of creating innovative communications to engage the wider public to connect to the natural environment. Colleagues from Moors for the Future Partnership discussed the innovative communications they have undertaken to connect audiences to remote and vast moorland environments. As part of the MoorLIFE2020 project, the Partnership has helped thousands of people to build a connection to the moorlands on their doorsteps. Find out how.
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Corporate Partnerships 11th January 2022
The overall concept of the webinar is to look at private-public partnerships for improved biodiversity management. We will focus on collaboration with nature protected areas as illustrated by UK National Parks Partnership and Vattenfall in Finland
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Re -Introducing Beavers a UK and European experience – 13 December 2021
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Assessing social impacts of European Protected Areas – 2nd December 2021
During this webinar we will discuss the role of social impact assessments for biodiversity conservation in European Protected Areas. We will initially identify the main categories of impacts. We will also present recent findings from the project FIDELIO capturing social impacts in a number of European Protected Areas in the past three years
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A Cooperative Perspective on Restoration of Irish Peatlands –Thursday 4th November 2021
For The Members Event 2021 recordings – Listen here
Joint webinars with EUROPARC Nordic-Baltic and EUROPARC Atlantic Isles Sections. Impacts of COVID-19 on the desire of more of the public to access nature and the outdoors.
Part 1 Thursday 6th May 2021
Looking at solutions of overcrowding in certain areas, particularly managing car parking and use of facilities in hot spots and the need for safe distancing.
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Part 2 Wednesday 26th May 2021
How to help people once in protected areas, especially those new to protected areas to respect the protected area and its values
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Managing Waste in protected Areas – Friday 14th July 2021
Managing waste of all types in protected areas and how to manage signage and information to encourage appropriate behaviour especially to those new to the outdoors.
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Demonstrating UAV Use – Pennine PeatLIFE – Monday 24 May 2021
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Private sector funding for peatland restoration – Thursday 21st January
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This webinar supported by the Pennine Peatlife project
Update on Implementation of Glover Review – Wednesday 2nd December 2020
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Making Space for Nature -10 years on – Tuesday 10th November 2020
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UK Peat update and Overiew of the Peatland Code 6th October 2020
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Heritage of Peatlands 17th September 2020
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Seascape Sensitivity and Visual Buffers: Latest Approaches and Guidance Part 1: Visual buffers wednesday 1st July 2020
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Part 2 – Seascape character sensitivity Tuesday 7 July 2020
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Links to documents mentioned in the webinar can be found here
Building Blocks Part 1 on Wednesday 10th June 2020
Part 1 – Find out about Moors for the Future Partnership’s ground-breaking project Building Blocks- Next Steps in Gully Blocking.
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Part 2 on Wednesday 17th June 2020
Part 2 – Join the Partnership team for a closer look at the technical details of the Building Blocks project.
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Pennine PeatLIFE Restoration Work Review – Wednesday 27th May 2020
Links to other videos mentioned in the webinar
Upland peat bunding https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLlXFPMo_ow
Heather brash https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4T0Q2P_t4w
Hagg re-profiling – YPP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bcIyRs9-rg
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Stage Zero river restoration approach, design and applications taken from Oregon into a UK river context of Honlicote Estate – Tuesday 12th May 2020
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The Roles of Different Sphagnum Species in Bogs – Tuesday 28th April 2020
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Working with Landscape character and qualities of designated landscapes – a Development Management Perspective – Thursday 19th March 2020
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Followed by Q & A session
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Molinia Management – Thursday 27th February 2020
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Nature and Public Health: the role of health in improving the health of a population – Thursday 5th December 2019
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Sustainable Fisheries in Marine Protected Areas… how to make it possible? Wednesday 20th November 2019
Film links within webinar:
- Ancient fishing grounds: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-lobsters-1936-online
- Angling in the 1980s: https://vimeo.com/12113036
- Stakeholder workshops using Community Voice Method https://vimeo.com/116849036
- Crab and Lobster Fisheries in Cromer Shoal Chalk Beds MCZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnH6ROP0KsU
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Waterfalls, peat pipes & gullies: hydrological restoration of challenging blanket bog sites a Pennine PeatLIFE perspective – Tuesday 10 September 2019
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Coastal Pioneers – Thursday 23 May 2019
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Demonstrating UAV Use: Pennine PeatLIFE – A Progress Report – Monday 13th May 2019
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A peatland-tailored User Guide on methods to value benefits from restoration. Friday 8th February 2019 .
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Peatland Code in Practice
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Bare Peat Restoration
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The Green Halo Partnership Wednesday 8th August 2018
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Geospatial Analysis of Blanket Bog habitats utilising Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Technology – Tuesday 5th June 2018
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Adding fuel to the fire: the pivotal role of Fire Operations Groups (FOGs) in wildfire fighting Friday 4th May 2018
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Rising from the ashes – wildfire conservation, research and prevention in the UK and beyond Thursday 26th April2018
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Paul Leadbitter provided a detailed outline of the Pennine PeatLIFE project on Thursday 8th March 2018
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From ecological meltdown to community-led marine protection; the Community of Arran case study Monday 29th of January 2018
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Reducing the visual impacts of major Infrastructure in the protected landscapes of England and Wales – Monday 6th February 2017
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