Scottish Natural Heritage and partners were recently shortlisted for a prestigious Natura 2000 award. Karen Mitchell, Operations Officer based in our Battleby office has just returned from the award ceremony in Brussels. Here’s the low down of the prestigious event.

Natura 2000 is a network of 27 000 Special Areas of Conservation and Special Protection Areas across Europe.  The winners of the 2018 Natura Award were announced at a ceremony in the European Commission Headquarters in Brussels on the 17 May.  Karen  attended to represent SNH, along with Dr Linda May from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH).

Sadly, we didn’t win (but see here for those who did). Loch Leven was short-listed from 75 submissions to 25, and was one of 4 finalists in the socio-economic category so a great achievement to be even shortlisted.   Thanks to all who voted for us in the public vote category, the Citizens Award. A massive thanks also to our 2017 Graduate Placement, Kirsty Fisher, who pulled the award application together during her year with SNH and is currently travelling in Australia and New Zealand.

This week also saw #Natura2000day, celebrating Europe’s network of Protected Areas and everything it has achieved for #connectingpeopleandnature.

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Full rewards results are listed online.