World Wetlands Day (WWD) marks the signing of the Convention on Wetlands on 2 February 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar on the shores of the Caspian Sea. This meeting is supporting key ideas outlined in the RAMSAR convention. The World Wetlands Day conferences have become major events for the wetland community as a whole to meet and share their views.

The aim of the conference is to bring together the UK wetland community, to explore the 2010 Ramsar theme of looking at wetlands and biodiversity in the context of climate change by considering coastal, lowland and upland wetlands and the links (or lack thereof) between policy, research and practice.

The conference will span two days with a one day conference in Peterborough on the 2nd February, and a conference dinner that evening, plus an optional field trip and guided visits to The Great Fen and Paxton Pits on February the 3rd.

The objectives of the event are to:

• To mark World Wetlands Day and use it to take a look at wetland conservation in the UK.

• To look at the similarities and differences in taking action for wetland biodiversity in three very different habitats coastal, lowland and upland wetlands

• To explore the way that policies, research and practical action need to be joined together to help deliver the most effective outcomes

• To bring together the wetland constituency so that it can meet and share experiences in a variety of settings, not least by looking at two very significant case examples in terms of the Great Fen and Paxton pits.

Who should attend?

The meeting is intended to be of direct value to:

• Site practitioners who have to meet the specific challenges of site management on a day to day basis and may be planning for climate change adaptation.

• Policy officers who are responsible for drafting policies on wetlands and biodiversity which inform effective practical adaptation and mitigation project, and give clarity to the impacts of climate change.

• Researchers who can update on the latest objective thinking on wetland biodiversity and functioning in the face of climate change.

• Regulators who make the critical links between policy and schemes on the ground

• The wetland community who need to be fully aware of the direction climate change is pushing biodiversity change in the different wetland habitats

Field Trip

In addition to the conference programme outlined overleaf with the conference dinner in the Bull Hotel Peterborough, a field trip to the Great Fen and Paxton pits has been arranged. Buses will leave Peterborough railway station at 9.00 on the 3rd and return by 4.00pm [There is a car park at the station]. Alan Bowley who is the site manager of the Great Fenn site will co-ordinate the site visit. Later in the day James Stevenson will lead a tour of the Paxton Pits site where aggregate extraction and wetland creation are going hand in hand.