Annual Forum 2021

The sixteenth Annual Forum was held online by the North Pennines AONB Partnership on Tuesday 23 November 2021.

The Annual Forum provides people with an opportunity to find out about some of the recent and upcoming work of the AONB Partnership staff team and to discuss matters relating to the future well-being of our natural land cultural heritage. Last year was the first time we’ve not held the forum since 2004, and this year we held an online event – sadly there wasn’t the opportunity to see some of the work in the field, but we hope we were able to show you much of what’s going on, albeit virtually.

This year there were presentations on some major areas of current work – from our hugely successful peatland programme, to ecological restoration at estate level, to landscape-scale nature recovery and public engagement projects, our Farming in Protected Landscapes programme, and some of our interpretation and education work.

For the first time this year, we brought in a panel from around the country to discuss the challenges we face in bringing about large-scale ecological restoration in the face of a global climate and ecological crisis. The panel comprised Sarah Mukherjee (writer, broadcaster and Chief Executive of the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment); Liz Newton (a Director at Natural England); Steve Trotter (Chief Executive of Cumbria Wildlife Trust and Vice-Chair of the Partnership); Rebecca Wrigley (Chief Executive of Rewilding Britain); and Richard Betton (NFU rep and Chair of the Northern Hill Farming Panel).

A recording of the Annual Forum is available below.