45. Webinar: Rewilding And The Water Cycle, February 23, 2022


The Company has a long-standing interest in environmental issues. Company Member Dr. Gemma Harvey from Queen Mary University hosted a Webinar on re-wilding. She explained that ‘ecosystem engineer’ species have the potential for working with natural processes to restore degraded environments by enhancing and accelerating environmental restoration, reducing the need for direct intervention and hence costs.


The prevailing approaches have tended to focus on strategic placement of measures in the landscape, rather than whole-system restoration. Rewilding restores wildness to anthropogenically altered landscapes, including the reintroduction of missing species. Gemma illustrated some of the types of landscape changes and ecosystem engineering effects, and its relevance for the water cycle and water resource management.

The February 2022 Webinar drew a large audience from the Company members and others interested in the way a managed landscape recovery could attenuate local flooding and water cycle management.

The Company and its Trust has had a decade-long successful cooperation with Queen Mary University, supporting Masters’ students with bursaries.

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