Lime Burning in Romania with Satul Verde By Jessica Hunnisett Snow and William Napier In August 2015, we were given the opportunity to travel to Meziad, a lime-burning village in Romania, and participate in the process of loading and firing a traditional kiln or ‘cuptor’ (Fig. 1 and 2), slaking the quicklime produced, and experimenting […]
The course ‘Investigating Traditional Lime Burning and Products’ was organised by ARCH Network in Scotland and Satul Verde in Romania. The course was funded by Erasmus+. For the week Monica Oprean from Satul Verde and Martin Clark from ARCH were our guides and transport, as well as the source of never ending information and stories. […]
Lime burning in Meziad is a family and village scale business. The limestone is burnt using renewable wood fuel at temperatures over eight hundred degrees Celsius for three days. Lime burning was once an important craft in the UK. The purity of the wood fired product and the fact that it achieves a much higher price than the factory made lime demonstrates there is still a window for old skills in a modern market.
Our journey started when we closed our front doors behind us, but the experience of Romania began when we landed at Cluj-Napoca late in the evening: fellow passengers burst into applause as the plane bumped onto the runway. Our guides, Martin Clark & Monica Oprean, welcomed us at the terminal. There were nine participants altogether: […]
Our week in West Pomerania was designed to give us an insight into as many different aspects of nature conservation as possible including state managed national parks and landscape parks, as well as nature reserves owned and managed by NGOs. The full programme gave us a feel for the biological richness of the area and […]
On our final day we visited the coast, staying in accommodation in Kamien Pomorski on the Zalew Kamienski, a large lagoon connected to the even larger Szczecin Lagoon. The lagoons are separated from the sea by only a narrow stretch of land and are saline due to connectivity with the sea via short channels. This […]
Our sixth day kicked off at the field office of the Society for the Coast, where we met with Dr. Małgorzata Torbé, project coordinator of the Odra Delta Nature Park. We were given an introduction to the park and its land management issues before heading out for a walk on site. The Society for the […]
Early morning travel saw us arriving at the city of Szczecin in West Pomerania. The city is the regional capital, the gateway to the Baltic Sea and clearly a very important port for this part of Poland. We were delighted to discover that we were to board a small river cruiser and explore the hidden […]
The horror of what people have to go through during times of war is often difficult to contemplate and we are fortunate that most of us will never have to experience this. It is undeniable however that war can have a significant impact on the way a landscape is shaped, and an examination of Cedynia […]
Day one began with a journey from the airport at Poznan to Slonsk and the headquarters of the Ujscie Warty National Park. There we met the Park Director, Konrad Wypychowski, and were given a number of presentations on the administration and history of nature conservation in Poland, as well as an introduction to the habitats […]
It was a great opportunity to be able to spend a week looking at the various types of parks and reserves in the Odra Delta and seeing the benefits and challenges of each. I think we were all blown away by how rich and diverse the wildlife and landscapes are, not just within the protected areas, but in the general landscape of the region as a whole. The main issues facing protected areas and wildlife in general in Poland seems to be a familiar one, lack of funding, staffing and awareness, which is all too familiar a problem in the UK as well. Due to Poland’s history, many people do not feel a connection to the land and so one of the results is that volunteering is nearly non-existant, which is a shame as this could be a rich source of help that is currently unavailable. It will also be interesting to see how the reserves will cope with climate change; increased pressure from predation and invasive species is tied in to this (as seen at Ujscie Warty NP) and subsequently pressure on staff time and funding for projects to deal with this. Hopefully the diversity of the landscapes means […]
A group report covering a range of perspectives and topics from the NET Latvia course 2019. Although a trip focused on understanding the management of nature conservation in Latvia our hosts made sure we received a healthy dose of cultural history to compliment and broaden our understanding of Latvia and its people.
From the wetlands of Kemeri National Park through to the wooded sand stone valley of Gauja National Park the visiting tourist cannot fail to be impressed by the abundance of information signs, play areas, picnic spots, fire pits, boarded walks and walking trails which manage to make you feel welcome without compromising on the natural beauty of the landscape. I think all in the group would agree that we were excited about the accessibility of Latvia to a tourist with return trips already being mapped out.
An account of the history and restoration works undertaken of one of Latvia’s major peat bogs – and the restoration of an adjoining river and associate flood plains.
In terms of organisational structure there are strong similarities to Scotland. The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) develops policy. The State Forest Service sits within the MOA and enforces legislation across the industry whilst providing support and issuing licences/permits for all forests regardless of ownership. Finally, the Latvia State Forests Joint Stock Company operates as a commercial entity and manages all state owned forests. However as Normunds went into more detail and as we visited more forests throughout the week it became clear that organisational structure was where any similarities to forestry in Scotland ended. In terms of forest cover, ownership and management Scotland and Latvia could hardly be more different. It was fascinating to spend time in a country with such a different approach, where forestry seems to be winning out over intensive tree farming. Since being back at work I’ve been looking at my sites differently, wondering how much of what I saw could work here and daydreaming of Wolf , Moose, Lynx and Bear…. Paldies Latvia!
In Latvia deer management is administered centrally by the State Forest Service and there is a national register of hunters who require a license to hunt. However management is devolved to the 2074 hunting districts with cull targets and objective agreed locally. This and the requirement of a minimum land area over which to hunt different species means that there is a more collaborative approach to hunting in Latvia. Cull reporting is more rigorous than in Scotland and hunters are required to record where, when and how many deer they harvest.
Given the extent and value of both Norway and Sitka spruce stands in both Scotland and the wider UK, it is vitally important economically and environmentally as described above to minimize and control any outbreaks of dangerous forest pests in coming years. Lessons learned in Latvia as well as other European countries indicate the importance of early detection through annual monitoring and indeed the important relevant intervention to control outbreaks and minimize losses as well as preventing further spread of infestations.
It is an impressive set up, with a (for Latvia) diverse staff of 35, who are highly skilled and experienced in their fields of biology, chemistry, electronics, and others. The umbrella vision for IES and the other 11 companies is an ethos of environmental thinking through medicine, art, beauty, and gastronomy. There is a conscious effort to break the barriers between science based knowledge and the experience of people who have gained a deep understanding of the land through years of working and living with it, blending the two to gain a higher level of understanding. This is done through job swaps, careful recruitment, local projects, and shadowing.
English
Deutsch
