Susannah Fleiss and Marc Metzger, University of Edinburgh Vanessa Burton, Woodland Trust Heather Gilbert, National Forest Company The TreE PlaNat project was conceived from the outset to include a strong element of knowledge exchange, which has proved more fruitful than any of us had envisaged. Our staff team includes Vanessa Burton, Conservation adviser on woodland creation at the Woodland Trust, and Heather Gilbert, Research and Evidence Manager at the National Forest Company, as formal project partners. Together with Marc Metzger and Susannah Fleiss at the University of Edinburgh, we have coordinated a number of activities and learned from a broad range of woodland creation practitioners and policymakers, to ensure that our project findings can directly support woodland creation on the ground. In this blog post, we provide an overview of our knowledge exchange activities and outputs, and reflect on the successes and how collaboration between research, practice and policy could continue to help support land management. Knowledge exchange and impact – our original plans From the outset, plans for TreE PlaNat included a series of blogs and webinars, the launch of a new demonstration site in the National Forest, a training event on woodland creation methods for land managers and advisers (held in August 2024, but two more will be run in 2025), articles in practitioner magazines, a summary research briefing for policymakers, and production of infographics (all of which will be made available in spring 2025). Crucially, plans included the establishment of a ‘Knowledge User Board’ of practitioners, advisers and policymakers, who have met regularly throughout the project, to bring together working knowledge and provide feedback on our research and outputs. The Knowledge User Board was intended to ensure that findings and outputs generated from the project would reach land managers, professional advisers and governmental organisations in a useful form, and also that the research team could learn from operational experience and ensure that their questions were directly relevant to professionals’ experiences on the ground. In practice, discussions in the group led to a number of ideas for unforeseen outputs, and highlighted the wealth of existing knowledge on the topic, which we were able to bring together in a practitioners’ perspectives paper (in review). The ‘Knowledge User Board’ brings together research, practice and policy There were 17 active members of the Knowledge User Board, whose remit spanned Great Britain, and included individuals from government and public sector organisations, nationwide environmental NGOs, regional and local woodland expansion sites (environmental NGOs and community forests), utilities companies, foresters, consultants and land agents, and farmers and farmer networks. The group met every three months throughout the project, with the aims of:
Knowledge User Board members themselves hoped to gain a clearer understanding of creating woodland through natural processes (both in terms of ecology and practical establishment and management), to share their knowledge and learn from others’ experiences, and obtain a better understanding of others’ viewpoints on the topic. Ideas from the Knowledge User Board bear fruit Discussions with the Knowledge User Board highlighted a number of key knowledge gaps and needs on the topic of creating woodland through natural processes. Where possible, we have addressed these, which has led us to a suite of project outputs that (we hope!) are of direct use to land managers, professional advisers and policymakers – and which we had not originally envisaged at the start of the project. This concerted effort to address stakeholder needs would not have been possible without staff dedicated to knowledge exchange and impact in the project team. A key need highlighted early on was for sharing of case studies using natural colonisation, because of limited currently available information, and the high degree of variability of the process. To this end, we began to collate case studies as part of the project, and now have a set of 15 from across Britain (currently available as a preliminary version that includes five examples). Knowledge User Board members stressed the importance of sharing ‘unsuccessful’ examples, where natural colonisation has not (yet) resulted in a woodland, and we have included information on some of these where possible. The group brought up many questions around understanding the ecological process of natural colonisation. We tapped into our networks to bring together 10 experts in a webinar on the topic, to report on their research findings and share further case studies. At this juncture, it became clear that our extended network held considerable knowledge and experience on creating woodlands through natural processes, which we decided to bring together in a short ‘Practitioners’ Perspective’ paper, currently in review at the Journal of Applied Ecology. This paper synthesises practical experiences from 15 case studies of natural colonisation with current academic knowledge, and will provide an important evidence base for land managers, policymakers and researchers alike. The group also repeatedly highlighted gaps in understanding how best to initiate and manage natural colonisation for different woodland creation goals. We decided to produce a set of FAQs on natural colonisation that would address these questions with the best information available, and designed the questions in collaboration with the Knowledge User Board. At a workshop in the National Forest held in May 2024, we brought together the group’s working knowledge to provide answers to these questions. To support these FAQs, we will also produce guidance for simple monitoring of natural colonisation sites, in order to provide support for land managers to make decisions on when and how to intervene with the process, and deepen their understanding of how their sites develop. The set of FAQs and the monitoring guidance will be made available this spring, as part of our full set of project outputs. Beneficial on all sidesIt’s clear that facilitating the Knowledge User Board has proved highly beneficial for the project – we have been able to produce a number of outputs suggested by land managers, advisers and policymakers, embedding their knowledge with the latest research findings. We have been able to ensure that our research findings and interpretation are directly useful for those working in woodland creation, and will reach their target audiences through the strong network that we have built up through the duration of the project. What did the Knowledge User Board members have to say about participation? We are very happy to report that 10 out of 10 who attended our final meeting said that they had enjoyed it (naturally, they might not have attended the final meeting if this hadn’t been the case…). They highlighted the value of learning directly from both the project’s findings and one another for furthering their own knowledge, and of the opportunity to broaden their networks and understand others’ perspectives on woodland creation through natural processes. Here are some reflections from our wrap-up webinar: Jenny Knight, General Manager, Stump up for Trees –
Matt North, Programme Manager, South Yorkshire Woodland Partnership –
Clare Pinches, Scientific Analyst, Natural England
And some reflections from our project partners: Heather Gilbert, Research and Evidence Manager at the National Forest Company –
Vanessa Burton, Conservation adviser on woodland creation at the Woodland Trust -
All in all, we hope that the knowledge exchange element of this project can inspire similar approaches in future academic work. There is no doubt that further collaboration among researchers, land managers and policymakers will be essential for improving our knowledge and practice of woodland creation in Britain in the years to come.
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AuthorsLaura Braunholtz, Ecology post-doc, University of Stirling Categories
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