St Andrews Nature Networks

About

This ambitious project created, restored and connected habitat at a landscape scale with a range of partners to improve ecological integrity along 16km of Fife coastline. Led by University of St Andrews, a collaboration of land managers, farmers, businesses and organisations contributed 27 sites to help improve the quality and connectivity of habitat from Guardbridge to Kingsbarns. Outputs included creation of two wetland mosaics, 2,413m native hedgerow, 4.78ha native woodland, 6,610m2 meadow, restoration of a saline lagoon, and bringing 13.78 ha of neglected Site of Special Scientific Interest into conservation grazing with Highland cattle. The project created stepping stones for wildlife in existing greenspaces and helped to establish nature networks between surrounding villages. Across 15 months, a total of 408 people engaged in 38 practical conservation volunteering opportunities and training sessions, including University of St Andrews students, staff, and members of the local community.

Top 3 learnings

1. We found that collaborative working can be effective and empowering, with landscape-scale impact for nature
2. People like to take part in practical action for biodiversity
3. Creating a nature positive estate is a journey and we were richly rewarded from the start

What is means to win

Recognition from the Green Gown Awards will be a major galvanising force for our institution that has taken a risk by changing its landscape management practice from conventional, highly manicured spaces to focus on creating wilder, more biodiverse areas. This will help those staff that have concerns for this approach to recognise the value put on enhancing biodiversity by the sector and their peers and drive further change. It will also be an important signal to our partners who have also worked really hard on this project and encourage them to work with us again on expanding the nature network. Finally, it would send a strong signal to our students that as an institution we have listened to their concerns about the nature emergency whilst creating a landscape that supports mental wellbeing, ecosystem services and a vibrant living lab for their studies.

Judges' feedback

The judges thought that this was a good landscape-scale nature recovery project, including multi-partner delivery and clearly a lot of impact. The judges also liked the co-constructed nature of the project.

Sustainable Development Goals