Woodland Symposium 2020

Woodland Symposium - Online

19th and 20th November 2020

BCT’s second woodland symposium was an opportunity for bat workers, landowners, ecologists and professionals from the woodland/forestry industry to gather together to listen to talks from fifteen speakers covering research, knowledge updates and case studies on woodlands and bats.

We were delighted to welcome two keynote speakers to this symposium, Mike Render and George Peterken.

Mike Render joined us with nearly 50 years of experience of working within the forestry industry and currently works for the Forestry Commission. He gave us a talk covering his reflections on almost 50 years in the forestry industry; what is missing and what should be addressed looking forward to the next 50 years.

George Peterken specialises in woodland ecology and conservation. He has worked for the Nature Conservancy Council (as part of the Chief Scientist team) as well as the Forestry Commission. He recently wrote a book about the long-term study of Lady Park Wood titled ‘Woodland Development - A Long-term Study of Lady Park Wood’, and for his keynote talk he shared with the delegates the changes he observed from this study.

To make up for the lack of in-person interaction, we provided additional discussion panels and specific networking sessions using breakout rooms. This meant we had three different panel discussions - 'Climate Change and Conservation', (with a presentation from Dr Orly Razgour on her work on Forest Bats and Climate Change), 'Working in Collaboration' with Back from the Brink and 'Drivers of Change' covering infrastructure projects, tree planting and woodland creation and tree diseases. The addition of the breakout rooms gave speakers and delegates the opportunity to discuss further in smaller groups.

We were also delighted to welcome 11 students to the symposium. They won student bursaries which were funded by the Back from the Brink Project. Blogs written by the students can be downloaded from here and from the BCT blog page.

The symposium programme and the talk abstracts can be downloaded from here.

If you have any questions about the event please contact BCT's Woodland Officer, Sonia Reveley at sreveley@bats.org.uk.

Sponsors

We are grateful to our Keynote Sponsor: Surrey Wildlife Trust Ecology Services and Co-sponsor Wildlife Acoustics.