Sharing lowland experiences: Highlights from the ADA Environment Day 2026

It was fantastic to be able to host our fourth annual ADA Environment Day at Park Farm in Thorney on Thursday (04 February). We are so grateful to all of our fantastic speakers from a across the lowlands of the UK and Europe, with engaging presentations spanning a diverse range of environmental and operational topics for flood and water level managers.

Sarah Fowler from the WWT opened the day by challenging IDBs to “make wetlands part of their armoury” as water level managers. It was great to hear about the experiences of water boards in the Netherlands with the management of beavers in their watercourses and dikes from Kees Schep. Dr Jon Bolland translated the findings from over a decade of research by the University of Hull into the fish friendliness of pumps, and Dr Laurie Friday from the Centre for Landscape Regeneration of the University of Cambridge gave excellent food for thought on achieving and monitoring the best ditch profiles for ecology and greenhouse gases.

Revai Kinsella presented her journey implementing integrated water management across the Pevensey Levels and Cuckmere valley in East Sussex on behalf of the local Water Level Management Board. Matt Wheeldon’s presentation on “managing rain better where it falls”, provoked a positive reaction to thinking more deeply how we separate and store rainwater from our sewerage systems at source.

Amy Shaw highlighted the emerging findings from the Fens2100+ team, and Dr Paul Clark from the Natural History Museum took us through the spread of the invasive Chinese mitten crab across the waters of the UK and Europe.

A valuable, informative, and engaging day, it was great to be able to connect with so many colleagues from across our lowland water management community. Thank you to all of our attendees for being part of it, our Vice Chair Michael Sly for keeping things on track as such a supportive host, and of course to Breheny Civil Engineering for their generous sponsorship without which we could not keep the event free to attend for practitioners.

The slides from all of our speakers can be found on the ADA Environment Day webpage.

---