Billion Oyster Project’s Post

It's an early and cold start in the January sunshine for our Project Officers this week. Our latest restoration site for the season kickstarting as I type. This site has a lot going on: 💧It's a really key one for water. Our work will help raise and stabilize the water table in the peat, slowing the flow of water (and aiming to reduce carbon runoff) into a crucial water body. 🌄It's a large landholding, we're working on over 200hecatres. 🔍The peat of the site is severely damaged due to cumulative impacts of tin streaming, peat cutting, drainage and overgrazing. 🧭There are really interesting and important historic, even Bronze Age features in the area. We'll be excluding from our works and using buffer zones. 🐾A lot of potential for wildlife on this site as we intend to use willow bundles and catchment woodland creation to diversify habitat, as well as stabilize the edges of eroding peat. 🌳There's also a lot of great work taking place in the catchment by #SWLakes for water, wildlife and local people. Watch this space. Latest location for crucial peatland restoration works taking place on Dartmoor to come this week... Funded by Natural England South West Water #UpstreamThinking #DuchyOfCornwall Cornwall Council National Trust Dartmoor National Park Authority Historic England #SouthWestLakes Environment Agency #Peatlands #PeatlandRestoration #PeatBog #GenerationRestoration #ClimateChange #Cornwall #Devon #Somerset #Dartmoor #BodminMoor #Exmoor #WestPenwith

Can #regenerativeaquaculture take place in #urban environments? Besides Havhøst - Ocean Harvest's urban cultivation platforms, the Billion Oyster Project is on a whole other scale. The project teaches #youngpeople how to grow #oysters for #proactive #ecosystemrestoration, working with #localbusinesses to use #sidestreams from the #gastronomy sector. The #livingbreakwaters the students construct create #habitat, increase #biodiversity and improve #waterquality while also acting as a #buffer against #stormsurge, dissipating waves before they reach the coastline. The nice thing is that's it's not only restoring ecosystems, the project is also restoring the forgotten #culturalheritage of New York. Once known as "The Big Oyster", oysters were consumed by everyone, rich and poor. Manhattan Island also boasted the biggest oyster population in the world before industrial trawling wiped them off the menu. The question is, can we do something similar in the #Baltic and #North Seas? We can certainly start small, with #livingseawalls in harbours and #educationalprograms to teach youngsters how to proactively regenerate their local environment. Check out this short documentary to find out more: https://lnkd.in/dxpa_8_M #oysters #nativeoysternetwork #coastalerosion #climateaction #climatesolutions #aquaculture #bivalves #shellfish #communityenterprise #CLLD

ReWìldiing hits New York! The Billion Oyster Project's aimes at restoring the once-thriving oyster population of New York Harbor. Since its inception, over 122 million oysters have been restored, engaging more than 20,000 NYC students in environmental stewardship and marine science education. This initiative not only revitalizes the harbor's ecosystem but also enhances water quality and fortifies our city's defenses against storm surges. Collaborations with local communities, schools, and restaurants are vital, turning discarded oyster shells into the foundations of new life. Here's how the process works: 1. Collection: The project collaborates with restaurants across New York City to collect discarded oyster shells. 2. Curing: After collection, these shells are transported to a curing site, typically located on Governors Island. Here, the shells are spread out in large heaps and left to cure in the open air for about a year. This exposure helps to remove any remaining organic matter and pathogens from the shells, making them a clean base for new oyster larvae to attach. 3. Preparation: Once cured, the shells are washed and placed into mesh bags or set in structures called gabions. These preparations are essential for the next stage, as they ensure the shells are ready to support new life. 4. Seeding: The prepared shells are then seeded with oyster larvae, which are also known as spat. This stage often takes place in controlled water tanks where conditions can be carefully managed to maximize the chances of the larvae attaching to the shells. 5. Deployment: Finally, the seeded shells are deployed into the harbor. They are strategically placed to form or enhance oyster reefs. These reefs not only help to repopulate the area with native oysters but also serve as natural water filtration systems, improving water quality and providing habitat for other marine life. Let's keep on rewilding Earth, restoring life's thriving potential place by place! #OysterRestoration #Sustainability #EnvironmentalEducation #NewYorkHarbor #BillionOysterProject #CommunityEngagement #MarineConservation #UrbanRewilding #NatureRestoration ##NatureBasedSolutions #Regeneration

Lagoon of Islands - a wetland restoration story from Tasmania 💚 This unique wetland was detrimentally impacted by the construction of a dam in the 1960s, which flooded and killed the reedbeds of the lagoon and caused the floating islands to sink. In the early 2000s, the Lagoon of Islands became untenable as a water supply due to increasingly poor water quality, leading to the dam being pulled down nearly 50 years after its construction. Now, after 10 years of restoration projects, the lagoon is providing habitat for endangered species like the Australasian Bittern, or 'Bunyip Bird'. See the full story: https://lnkd.in/gjTWeqUR Nature Glenelg Trust #restoration #sustainability

The future of our coasts lies in nature. Oyster reefs are a great example of green infrastructure.

At Brice, we’re always taking on unique scopes of work wherever and whenever we can to help solve problems for our valued clients. We’ve got the people, the skills, and the resources. One such unique scope of work was the removal of invasive species on Wake Island Atoll—a project we completed this past year. On a visit to this remote locale, it’s hard to miss the plethora of the non-native Ironwood trees that have taken over swaths of land across the atoll. While it’s not been entirely clear how this nonnative tree made its way to Wake Island. The need to remove the trees was surely clear, to improve habitat for native species and reduce safety concerns in areas adjacent to the active WIA runway. An environmental assessment determined that the best method would be nonintrusive to minimize impact to this National Historic Landmark and Pacific Remote Island Marine National Monument. Thus, the Brice team used chainsaws to cut down the trees; an excavator for further felling and stacking; and a chipper to chop up the wood for stockpiling. The work was performed without impact to migratory birds, and after ensuring the areas for removal were free of any UXO left behind on this former World War II battlefield. #Proud2BeBrice #Alaska #ANC #smallbusiness #environmentalrestoration

A new project has been launched to find Scotland’s ‘lost’ pinewoods. The Wild Pine Project is a collaborative effort between Woodland Trust Scotland and Trees for Life aimed to enable the recovery of Highlands’ remnant pinewoods. 🌲🌲🌲 Caledonian pinewoods are among our oldest and richest habitats. They are characterised by wild Scots pines, descended from Scotland’s once-vast ancient forests, and have been shaped and valued by people for centuries. They provide refuge for some of our rarest wildlife, yet cover only 1% of the Highlands. The Wild Pine Project aims to identify and map these important refuge areas and ancient pine populations so they can become targets for restoration action. #wildpineproject #pinewoods

Paper, building timber and furniture are all made from the non-native conifer species threatening these Caledonian pine forests. Often when we think of forests, we picture tropical rainforests or (in the UK) deciduous woodland (oaks, bluebells, etc.). However, there are many different types of forests, all facing different pressures from commercial activity. The Caledonian pine forests are a great example of a lesser known forest-type which is under-threat due to the planting of non-native species to make the products we use everyday and/or are integral to our supply chains. How can we change this? 🌲 Start by understanding the origin, governance practices and composition of the key commodities in our products and supply chains🌲 To further support the regeneration of Caledonian pine forests check out Woodland Trust Scotland and Trees for Life

We were pleased to see our first spring ephemeral blooming recently, Virginia springbeauty (Claytonia virginica). In restoration, land use history can be difficult to determine. Was a forest cleared for pasture or, more commonly in our region, did a grassland become forest when fire was removed? Spring ephemerals and other conservative (require high-quality habitat) forest or woodland herbaceous groundlayer species can be a clue. Ephemerals grow and bloom while leaves are off the trees in early spring, taking advantage of the increased sunlight. A diverse community of them suggests historical forest or woodland. But these are different ecosystems (a forest is usually defined as having more than 80% canopy cover and a woodland has 30-80%) so which was it? Each have typical groundlayer and understory species adapted to different amounts of sunlight, a woodland has a lush groundlayer but this can be lost if the woodland degrades to forest. The trees can help—oaks require sunlight for regeneration so they are a woodland species—but mesic hardwoods (e.g. maples, beech, tuliptrees) have expanded outside their natural habitat in coves and shady north slopes in the absence of fire. The solid tuliptree (Liriodendron tulipifera) stands so common in Virginia are early successional regrowth following clearcuts or abandonment of pasture and are not natural forests. Every ecosystem has its natural place and we try determine what a site should be before doing restoration. 📸📝: Booker Moritz, Conservation Manager #ephimeral #farming #landmanagmenet #sustainablefarming #kinlochfarm #huntcountryva #fauquiercounty #theplainsva

Just revisited this story I wrote for Craft Magazine back in 2022 about the legacy of wildfire in Washington's San Juan Islands, and it occurred to me that this might be one of my favorite fire-related pieces that I've written. It allowed me to explore the fire history in my own backyard, through the lens of recreation, with the help of local experts—including a Coastal Salish tribal member. It also allowed me to write for a different audience (largely bikers and outdoorsfolks in the greater PNW) than I normally do when writing about wildfire. As I hone in on what I want my career in wildfire communications to look like, it will almost certainly include more of this style of work—braiding wildfire into topics like recreation through highly-localized storytelling and research. I believe there's a huge amount of untapped potential to engage recreationists in not only learning more about wildfire and climate resilience, but in the actual *act* of building resilience. On that note: I think anyone who has ever spent a day doing something challenging outside (so, most recreationists) knows the value and power in that experience. And I think channeling that experience and creating more avenues to build community and camaraderie by doing meaningful work in the woods together is probably one of the most revolutionary things we can aspire to do in the conservation/resilience space at the moment.