Life Elia

41 months after LIFE Elia’s kick off, the project has reached its full maturity. Actions on the field are progressing at a steady pace, valuing all the preliminary mapping and planning achieved in early 2014.

The idea of a vegetation management aiming at enhancing biodiversity is also getting further, within Elia but also within other Transmission System Operators (TSO). Seems like a wind of change is blowing…

We also moved to a next stage : we have completed our costs/benefits analysis, showing how economically profitable it can be to manage vegetation differently !
Further on, our meetings with TSOs throughout Europe has helped us to get a clear vision of what could be done in this field both for biodiversity and for the companies. You will read about us soon on these last two topics.
 
We also hosted the European Commission and Astrale (monitoring office) during a two days visit on our Belgian and French sites in October 2014. A unique opportunity to show the job done by all the team and to draw attention on the importance of our local partnerships.

We wanted to share with you events that took place these last months of intense work.
 
Enjoy the reading !

We keep on meeting landowners (municipalities and private owners) and local forest administrations to get their support to our project.
 
Municipalities of Paliseul, Bertrix, Ferrières, Ouffet, Aywaille, Arlon and Attert have already given us agreements on our actions proposal. Even though on smaller surfaces, things are also going fine with private owners.
 
Field works have been completed on several sites : planting forest edges in Bertrix and Mellier ; sowing of flowering meadow in Attert, Gedinne, Tenneville et Ramioul ; digging ponds in Doische and Beauraing ; fighting of invasive plants in Couvin and Neufchateau ; and soon installing fences for pasturage in Ferrières, Attert and Martelange.

Have a look on the video we did to illustrate the sowing of flowering meadows under overhead lines in September 2014.

More detailed information of our field work in the next newsletter.

Results are encouraging ! We are on our way to reach our goals, knowing that recent agreements will boost our figures for the next report in Fall 2015.

Showing the good dynamic launched with our local partners in Vuillecin (Doubs Department), we planted wild apple and pear trees (see the video) with the local Forest administration in November 2014.

In Île-de-France, conventions were signed on a vegetation management by pasturage in a Nature reserve.

In the French Ardennes, turf cutting and peat restoration have progressed very well.

In Haute-Durance (High Alps Department), actions will soon be undertaken since RTE just received the Declaration of Public Utility from the French Government to renovate a high-tension line (video and leaflet). 

An idea can be spread if we talk about it ! So the LIFE does…

Two articles and the LIFE Elia were released :

• in Vivre la Wallonie from the Walloon Administration (large public)
• in Hunting and Nature from the Royal Saint-Hubert Club of Belgium (hunting federation)

Three training days were organised for various public to explain challenges and solutions found by the LIFE Elia

• for municipalities in collaboration with the Municipalities and Cities of Wallonia Union
• for private owners in collaboration with the Royal Forestry Society of Belgium
• for Nature Parks in collaboration with the Walloon Nature Parks Federation 

The team also visited the plant nursery Op de Beeck : our partner for the plant multiplication coming from seeds locally harvested in the framework of the project.

The first didactic panels were installed in Belgium in Mellier and Attert. In total, 30 panels explaining the LIFE Elia actions will be installed along hiking trails.

And several leaflets and panels have been finalised in our sites in France : inArdenne Department, Doubs Department and in Finistère Departement.

Elia is delivering information about our actions and put our work under the spotlight on its internet site.
Efforts are also given by RTE, by publishing articles on their excellent blog (1 and2).

The European dimension of the project is a key point of a LIFE Biodiversity !

The networking campaign launched beginning of 2014 is on good tracks : 15 TSO reached. We met different TSO during the last months : APG in Austria,Swissgrid in Switzerland, MAVIR in Hungary, 50 Hertz in Germany and soon Statnett in Norway.

We were also invited by TenneT to present the project during a round-table on « Electricity transmission and Biodiversity » organized by NABU (an environmental NGO) and BESTGRID.

We also strive to raise the issue of biodiversity among international bodies dealing with electricity transmission. We presented the LIFE project in theCIGRE (international council on large electric systems) meeting in Paris and twice by ENTSO-E (European body for TSO) in November and December 2014.

We also presented the LIFE project in Paris during a symposium organised by the Club of Linear Infrastructure and Biodiversity, and the International Union for Nature Conservation in Paris.

The team participated to an inter-LIFE meeting in Luxembourg. The idea was to gather different LIFE projects to exchange know-how and good practices.


A great work achieved by the team, and some more actions to come !

For any question or suggestion, please contact us !

The LIFE Elia team