Annual Forum 2024

For this year’s Annual Forum, Dorset Local Nature Partnership is delighted to be hosting a special Local Nature Recovery event for Dorset.
 
Dorset is buzzing with amazing nature recovery activities already taking place, come and join us at the Annual Forum to hear about some of this fantastic work and different approaches being taken across various sectors in Dorset, from farms to urban parks, and river catchments to landscape scale changes.  
 
But we need to do more, so you will also hear all about the new Local Nature Recovery Strategy being created in Dorset, and there will be an opportunity, through a range of interactive workshop sessions, to help shape the next steps in the preparation process. Building on previous workshops hosted by Dorset Local Nature Partnership, your ideas will help ensure the strategy is useful to people working together to recover nature across the county.  
 
This is a free, full day event, with plenty of networking opportunities, information stalls and a hot buffet lunch. 

Key Forum Documents

Programme (presentations now available)

9.00 Registration

9.30 Welcome – Luke Rake, Chair Dorset LNP

9.35 Interactive session

Session 1 – Landscape Recovery

9.45 Nature Recovery: Importance, Opportunities and Limits – Dr Phil Sterling, Independent Chair, Dorset National Landscape Partnership  

9.55 Workshop session

10.05 Wareham Arc: Delivering Landscape Scale Change – Lizzie Hibbard, RSPB

10.20 Upper Axe Landscape Recovery Project – Alisdair Moffet, Upper Axe CIC

10.35 Win’ning the Allen – Nick Shaftesbury, River Allen CIC

10.50 Brit Catchment Recovery Project – Sam Rose, West Dorset Wildling

11.05 Session 1: Q&A session

11.15 Refreshment break

Session 2 – Dorset Local Nature Recovery Strategy

11.35 Introduction to Dorset Local Nature Recovery StrategyAmy Smith, Dorset Council

11.45 Workshop sesion

12.30 Lunch

Session 3 – Space for Nature

13.30 Interactive Session

13.35 Urban Nature: Connecting It All Together (final slide video) – Martin Whitchurch, BCP Council & John Hanson, Parks Foundation

13.50 FLAVOURS: A Taste of Dorset’s Countryside – Caroline Richards, Dorset National Landscape & Anastasia Pikalova, Dorset Race Equality Council

14.05 Wild Woodbury: Making Space for Nature – Seb Elwood, Dorset Wildlife Trust

14.15 Investing in Healthy Soils: Farming in Protected Landscapes – Video from Tom Gregory, Marsh Farm

14.25 A Million-Pound Project to Restore Dorset’s Peatlands – Grace Hervé, Dorset Wildlife Trust

14.40 Session 2: Q&A

Session 4 – Measuring Recovery

15.10 Can Citizen Science and AI Help Record Wildlife on Farms? Lesson from a Dorset farm – Video from Sophie Alexander, Hemsworth Farm

15.20 Farmer Cluster: Setting the Baseline for Nature Recovery – Emily Newton, Dorset Wildlife Trust

15.30 The Great Big Dorset Hedge Project – John Calder, Dorset Climate Action Network (plus additional film)

15.40 Session 4: Q&A

15.50 Workshop Session

16.20 Round Up

16.30 Close

For more information about the Forum please email: info@dorsetlnp.org.uk

Find out more about the Dorset Local Nature Recovery Strategy