Finally, we made freely available in our website the first open version of the Toolkit for the conservation of semi-natural habitats in agricultural lands, tailored for farmers and agricultural technicians.

This guide has been jointly written by six European organisations: Fundació Emys (Catalonia), Fundatia ADEPT (Romania), Conservatoire des Espaces Naturels d’Occitanie (France), Comitato per le Oasi WWF dell’Area Fiorentina (Italy), Český Svaz Ochránců Přírody (Czech Republic) and Xarxa per a la Conservació de la Natura (Catalonia).

Cover page of the first open version of the toolkit.

The toolkit provides a range of tools for people engaged in agriculture and livestock farming, or who offer technical advice in this area, to know the benefits that semi-natural habitats of farmlands, such as field margins, hedgerows, ponds or tree lines, provide to biodiversity and farming activity, and how to properly manage or create them.

Drawing of a field with the associated semi-natural habitats.

The entire guide and every chapter can currently be found only in English, but we will make them available soon in French, Romanian, Italian, Czech, Spanish and Catalan. If you have any comments or suggestions to improve the guide, they will be very welcome and will help us to make a better final version, which is expected by the end of 2021.

During this spring we will also make free and practical face-to-face training events in several countries, based on this toolkit and with an approximate duration of two morning sessions. These sessions are aimed at professional and semi-professional farmers, as well as agricultural technicians. You can find further information here.