NET Destinations 2017 – Managing Our Natural and Cultural Assets
The NET project is a Key Action 1 adult education program for Staff. It is funded by the European Union Erasmus+ programme. NET offers training courses to those working within the natural and cultural heritage sectors. Staff are funded through this project to undertake a structured training event in a relevant organisation abroad. The costs of international travel, accommodation and subsistence are covered by the Erasmus+ grant. Applications for 2016 are complete. Dates for 2017, that appear below, will be unaffected by the referendum vote.
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Placements are now available for 2017
We believe that EU Nature Exchange Erasmus+ Program will continue in 2017
Lišov Museum is a newly set up rural museum which aims to celebrate culture history and to provide a stimulant to local development. The area has a rich heritage of historical and archaeological sites and the museum works on a range of building and craft techniques as part of their education and outreach activities
This course is now full – there are still places on some of the other courses for 2019. Dates: 3 to 10 September 2019 (with flexibility a couple of days either side to allow for flight availability) Themes: to provide people working in Scottish upland management to see how native woodland responds to changes in grazing pressures. Participants will visit a variety of biodiverse, reforested landscapes from exposed coast to mountain tops, with multiple land uses including hunting, forestry and farming. There is rough and sometimes rocky walking on most days of this visit which participants should consider when applying. Draft Itinerary: Day 1 arrival Stavanger and drive to Gaudland; Day 2 Gården Li on Hidrasundet on the coast; Day 3 Fidjadalen; Day 4 Byklehaiene; Day 5 Bjåen and Berdalen; Day 6 Åmøy Fjordferie; Day 7 Return Hosts: Duncan Halley (Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, NINA) Please click here to view the film from the NET 4 visit in 2018 to learn more about the visit.
Dehesa San Francisco works to preserve the biodiversity of the Dehesa through sustainable agriculture. This NET5 visit will learn about the work of the foundation on the farm and with local producers, farmers and organic cooperatives.
Traditional crafts and skills are alive and well in the Cyprus community of Kato Drys. Here the local community are making traditional local products for sale which have real integrity and a true sense of place. All of these products and processes rely on the 4 pillars of sustainability, Cultural, Social, Environmental and Economic. This week long structured course looks at these traditional skills and products and considers why they have importance in our contemporary world. Participants will create a wall mural in Kato Drys.
The island of Saaremaa lies on the west coast ot Estonia in the Baltic Sea. Saaremaa is unique for its biodiversity and well preserved cultural and natural heritage. It is home to the Vaika Bird Sanctuary, one of the oldest nature sanctuaries in Europe. Saaremaa represents the site of one of the first Estonian Song Celebrations (1863) – a more, than 150 year – tradition of Song Celebrations is one of Estonian cultural highlights and Choral singing is one of the most widely spread traditions of Estonians.
Hay is at the base of almost all traditional meat & dairy farm products – even to the farmyard chickens eating grasshoppers brought into the yard with the new hay crop. Hay – especially cut with a scythe, has shaped Romania’s rural cultural landscape and resulted in enormous biodiversity of flowering plants, insects & birds. Other important & ecosystem shaping farming activities include grazing and cutting (shredding/pollarding) trees for leaf hay and for fencing without wire.
This structured study visit to Bulgaria will focus on the management of nature sites, traditional crafts and culture heritage as part of local development. The programme is hosted by the Devetaki Plateau Association and your guide will be Velislava Chilingirova.
Participants will learn the basics of turf cutting and building with turf. Note: Building with turf is hard work and rather messy so you will need good boots and work clothes
Slovenia has rich biological and cultural diversity and covers a range of landscapes from Alpine to coastal. This course has a focus on the management of species and landscapes through sustainable development, including rural entrepreneurship.
Feedback from Stuart Graham, SNH, NET4 2018: I thoroughly enjoyed the training trip to Latvia. I cannot believe how much we managed to fit into our week and the attention to detail to the arrangements from our host (Andis) was impeccable. The quality of all the individuals we met was of the highest quality and they were from the top levels of their respective organisations and devoted their time to share their knowledge. Our group stuck together well and we therefore learned from each other as well as our hosts. We also got a great insight to Latvian customs, tourism, diet/foods, history as well as landscape, wildlife and conservation.
The NET 5 visit to Finland will focus on different aspects of forestry and biodiversity management and education. The group will also meet with Finnish forestry students to learn about environmental education and to share their skills from Scotland.
(C)=cultural (N)=natural There is some crossover between disciplines
“We have around 500,000 capercaillie in Finland ” said Tapio Vähä-Jaakkola, our host at a local hunting club, as our jaws dropped. My colleagues Chris and Molly from RSPB work on capercaillie and the population in Scotland is in a pretty sorry state, having dropped to around 2000, from an estimated 20,000 in the 1970s. Capercaillie populations are healthy enough for Finns to hunt tens of thousands of them a year. “Most of the capercaillie hunting takes place in Northern Finland”, Tapio said later. In the 10,000 hectares of forest controlled by the Metsästysseura Haukka Ry hunting club, they hadn’t shot capercaillie for many years “Last year we calculated that there were enough capercaillie for us to hunt two.”
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 that they are slightly more resilient than they are here in the UK and that people can be inspired to protect the amazing wildlife and landscape that they currently have.
ARCH coordinates adult education courses to Europe through the Erasmus+ Programme. We run a range of week-long courses for 6 to 8 participants with our host trainers in Europe. Next year we will run 10 courses based around managing cultural and community heritage
It was amazing to explore the regenerating forests in SW Norway and to understand better how native forests can develop with a lower browsing pressure.
Deer management practices differ between Norway and Scotland, with carcass weights used to determine deer quotas in Norway, indicating the overall health of the population and helping to balance its impacts on woodland regeneration.
Cultural and social factors have influenced the woodland regeneration we saw, from the abandonment of farms over the 20th Century to the different attitudes to hunting, foraging and land-use in Norway.
The diversity of species and structure in the Norwegian forest sets an example for us to aspire to in Scotland, and we need to consider how to integrate a rebounding forest within Scotland’s cultural and social setting.
Natural regeneration was abundant nearly everywhere we visited, something which is comparatively unusual in Scotland unless it is enclosed within a deer fence. Regeneration was so prevalent in some locations that it was encroaching into previously open habitats, such as small fields of abandoned farms. A strong hunting culture and associated herbivore management within Finland appears to the main cause for natural regeneration within Finnish forests.
Geographical Connectivity is the Natural Key
Norway has had a natural recolonization of all carnivores, due to be part of the continent Europe and neighbour countries fluxes. First wolves recolonized in 1980 to the south, through dispersion of the first wolves by likely Finish-Russian populations. The geographical position of the UK being an island doesn’t allow natural recolonization, and therefore it leaves the question to wether we could or we should intervene
The purpose of this report is to share the knowledge I gained while working with the Lišov Múzeum in October 2019. As a member of the Technical Outreach and Education team at The Engine Shed, I wanted to focus on the traditional building materials and skills, as well as the importance of community engagement in Lišov.
This report is primarily visual, with key points written out. The idea behind this is to be able to share this information with colleagues, or others who may be interested, in an accessible format. The ability to share information visual and through activities or tactile learning is important to our team and for our work with the public.
The level of protection afforded to different types of protected area in Poland is not dissimilar to that in Scotland. For example, in terms of the Natura 2000 network all EU countries have an obligation to transpose the Habitats and Birds Directives into domestic legislation. Similarly, in Scotland and Poland, regulatory authorities and have their own responsibilities.
I think the main difference in the protect areas protection measures between Poland and Scotland is the level of public promotion and access provision.
In Scotland we actively advertise our protected areas at whatever level but in Poland this is much more subtle even where public access provision is encouraged.
The trip to Poland was truly fascinating in many respects and one would hope that western influences do not put pressures on the natural heritage we experience in Scotland and the UK as a whole.
I was especially interested in the ethnographic display in the museum which included some flax heckling boards. I have been working on an 18th century flax mill near Glasgow and so it was great to see how the hand heckling technique worked. One handle was for the foot and the other for one hand. The flax was then thrashed against the heckling spikes to straighten the flax fibres ready for spinning. This technique would have been used in Scotland prior to the construction of water mills. Apparently there were a couple of water mills in Lišov in the 19th century, but they have been demolished. Corn mills were often used for other purposes such as flax mills and saw mills. Flax was grown in this area in the past and according to Jacob there are old flax soaking ponds in the area.
This is one of the faces of Walltopia – a Bulgaria company and a global leader in climbing wall manufacture. It belongs to the Mountain Guides training school in Troyan on the Devistashko Plateau, established in 2013. Marco, one of the teachers here, tells us that students arrive aged 14, and leave six years later with a range of skills including cultural tourism, mountain biking skills, navigation and first aid.
I went to Finland with an idea to compare the forests there with those in Scotland and, more specifically, with that found at Abernethy. It became apparent, however, that such a comparison was unrealistic. The context of the forests, geographically, culturally and historically, are totally different. Finland is roughly 5 times the size of Scotland and is 75% forested. The population is approximately the same in both countries. This has meant that huge areas of Finnish forest are never, or incredibly rarely, disturbed by human activity. Historically, effectively all of Scotland’s forests have been managed as commercial plantations, especially following the Second World War. This meant a huge reduction in the size of the forest and large areas of forest consisting of uniform trees the same age and size. Finland has greater areas of old growth, natural forest which has never been managed by humans. Culturally, the natural world appears to garner much more respect in Finland than in Scotland with visitors much less likely to actively damage the forest or wilfully disturb wildlife. Regular fire sites and camping huts mean that visitors have designated places to eat, sleep and light fires. Much of the way the Finnish people treat and manage their forests provide a glimpse of how Abernethy could be however it felt to me that we are simply a couple of generations behind.
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