From 26 to 28 May, four Restore4Life partners visited the associated region of Norrköping in Sweden to hold a joint workshop and field visit with the Austrian implementation site on the March river.
The workshop with around 20 stakeholders was held on 27 May at the Elite Grand Hotel in the town centre hosted by the Department for the Environment and Nature of the County Administrative Board of Östergötland. We exchanged information and experience of the Restore4Life project, conducted a PESTLE analysis with the stakeholders to establish the socio-economic circumstances that local enterprises operate under, and discussed approaches for formulating a road map for site restoration.
The following day, our team and colleagues from the county DEN visited one of the restoration sites on the Bjärkusaån stream, which flows across farmland, where a drainage channel had been made to cut across several meanders to increase flow velocity. The plan is to excavate the meanders and use the spoil to fill in the drainage channel so the original meanders are reinstated. Similar measures will also be taken on two other streams. The Restore4Life team also visited the Svensksundsviken nature reserve where a more ambitious proposal was being prepared to create meanders across a section of the extensive coastal grazing meadows to provide better habitat for breeding waterbirds.
Two visits to local companies that had activities associated in the catchment of the river were made: a conventional arable farm which relied on EU subsidies to operate, and a less conventional livestock farm that raised cattle but mainly produced ostrich meat. The interviews threw light on attitudes to the potential business benefits to local SMEs from ecosystem services generated by wetland restoration.
The organisation of our visit was superb and we are most grateful for the support given to us by the staff of the Department for the Environment and Nature of the County Administrative Board of Östergötland.
