Seminar Celebrating Scotland’s Year of Coasts and Waters

Scotland is home to a vast range of waters, from breath-taking coastline, lochs and rivers, to burns and wetlands – our waters are the lifeblood for our Nature and shape our land.

With the current twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change, what can we do to restore our aquatic environments and protect our irreplaceable species from these threats?

Our online seminar showcases some of the recent environmental projects within the north east of Scotland which are shaping our waters.  From restoring urban burns, tackling ocean plastic pollution, saving our salmon to future-proofing our rivers against climate change effects – there is a lot of great work going on!  

Within this seminar you will discover a range of environmental projects from the East Grampian Coastal Partnership, Aberdeen City Council, the River Dee Trust and the Spey Catchment Initiative which are improving our waters.  Alongside these projects our very own chair NESBiP Roger Owen (former head of Ecology at SEPA and also chair of the local Scottish Wildlife Trust Group) provided insight into what climate change effects would look like for our rivers and lochs.

Mairi Gougeon (MSP for Angus North & Mearns and Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Islands) also kindly provided an introduction to the seminar and highlighted actions that the Scottish Government are taking to help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change.

As well as being embedded below, the video is available on Vimeo.

The line-up order for speakers changed slightly from from the advertised poster, so the speakers appear on the video as follows:

(00:00:00 – 00:05:52) Introduction – Alex Stuart – Coordinator for North East Scotland Biodiversity Partnership

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(00:05:52 – 00:10:48) Welcome from Mairi Gougeon MSP

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(00:12:05- 00:31:30) Ian Hay – Project Manager at EGCP – EGCP Plans and Actions

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(00:31:40- 00:50:05) Roger Owen – former head of Ecology at SEPA, Chair of NESBiP & local Scottish Wildlife Trust group,  Coordinator Scottish Freshwater Group Citizen Science – Adapting to Climate Change Impacts on Scottish Rivers and Lochs

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(00:50:28- 01:10:45) Al Reeve – Biologist at River Dee Trust – Fish Grow on Trees

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(01:10:57- 01:30:57) Penny Lawson – Project Officer at Spey Catchment Initiative – Protecting and Enhancing Biodiversity in the Spey Catchment

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(01:30:58- 01:51:08) Ian Talboys – recently retired Countryside Officer for Aberdeen City Council – Working Wetlands

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(01:51:24 – 02:06:54) Final Q+A’s & Round up from Alex Stuart