The seminar called "How to establish a flowering grassland" took place on 4th September at the Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. Based on the number of participants, we assume that this is a current and appealing topic. In the afternoon, there was also a practical demonstration of brush harvesters used to collect seeds (or rather seed biomass) of plant species.
We sincerely thank Calla - Association for Preservation of the Environment for organizing the seminar, and Jiří Řehounk for the photos.
The TEAM#UP project slowly starts. At the end of June, we met all the project partners from the Czech Republic, Germany, Norway, and Spain. Now, the intensive work on teaching materials starts. The materials will be prepared for pilot integration into education next year. We are looking forward to cooperation with the Czech project partners: Vyšší odborná škola a Střední zemědělská škola, Benešov, and Pro-Bio Association of Ecological Farmers.
We successfully continue with completing of our Database of Successional Series to extend it to the European scale (
The SER Europe Legal Working Group has developed a short 
What do they have in common? Both localities are newly established Bird Parks. Both localities will soon be grazed. And at both localities, we plan to establish, in cooperation with the Czech Ornithological Society, permanent plots to monitor the effect of grazing on the restoration of speacies-richer meadow vegetation. We are also impatiently waiting if a joint project will be supported in which we could further broaden our colaboration with the Czech Ornithological Society.
The second year of the project on the development of regional seed mixtures has started, as well as the work in the field. We began with the marking of the donor (i.e. plots where seed biomass will be collected) and receptor plots (e.i. plots where the seed biomass will be sown) in Raná in České Středohoří. The weather was not very good but the flowers of the pheasant's eye (Adonis vernalis) cheered us up. In May, we will find out what grows in the locality. In June, July and August, we will brush the seeds (e.i. collect) and in autumn, we will sow the adjacent field, which we will then monitor for a long time.
After intense final weeks, ERASMUS+ TRAIN#ER project has completed its results. We greatly thank all participants of the survey and the focus group at the beginning of the project. We now invite you to take a look at the project outcomes:
We have made a comment stating our opinion about the recently published Principles and Standards by Young et al. (2022) which provides an international framework for ecological restoration of mine sites. Although useful, we identified some limitations for practice, especially in Europe. For more details, please read: