Life Elia

A website will be created and regularly updated to provide permanent exposure for the LIFE project, its objectives, results and status.

It is aimed at three groups:

• forest owners/managers affected by the routes of high voltage lines: illustrating the implementation of the initiatives laid down in the project
• the general public: explaining the project, justifying the works and education about the theme of biodiversity
• electricity transport operators in the 27 Member States with a view to exporting the types of management tested during the project and the remedial work undertaken as much as possible

In addition to basic information, the intention is for this site to contain all of the information needed for the various partners involved (including at EU level) to implement concrete activities on the ground and for them to see what other stakeholders involved have been able to do in the framework of the project.

Most importantly, this site highlights the innovative nature of the various types of management applied under high voltage lines, the impact on biodiversity and on budgets, compared with the management currently practised.  

Being able to summarise the entire LIFE ELIA project for the general public in just six pages is the task of this general presentation leaflet.

This leaflet has therefore been created to promote and popularise our actions. It will serve as a quick contact sheet at our meetings, conferences, fairs, etc.

14,000 copies have been printed in French and 6,000 in English.

We also plan to produce a leaflet for each of the 8 sites in France. There will be 5,000 copies of each of these leaflets printed to be used locally in the region of the restoration project itself.

Er zal een specifiek informatiebulletin voor de hoogspanningsnetbeheerders worden opgesteld.

In dit bulletin krijgen ze uitleg over de verschillende uitgevoerde acties, de nieuwe geteste beheersmethoden, de effecten ervan op de fauna en flora van de betrokken sites en het belang voor de lijnbeheerders om ze toe te passen.

Deze halfjaarlijkse brochure, die in PDF-formaat van de website kan worden gedownload, zal (in de Engelse versie) ook toegankelijk zijn voor de andere hoogspanningsnetbeheerders binnen de EU-lidstaten. De brochure is bedoeld om hen te sensibiliseren voor bepaalde beheersmethoden inzake de beplanting in de omgeving van hoogspanningslijnen die de biodiversiteit in deze zones, die tot nu toe vaak 'verloren' waren, daadwerkelijk kunnen bevorderen. Er is gepland om in de loop van de vijf jaar van het project tien brochures online te publiceren.

The intersections between high-voltage power lines and paths or roads are ideal places to inform a large number of people about the developments being carried out by the electricity transmission system operators as part of the LIFE project.

Informative signs will therefore be best placed there; they will explain and illustrate the purpose of the LIFE project and the nature of the work being carried out.

They will present the LIFE project in general, the environments and the species targeted, the need for restoring and managing the sites, the initial results and the benefits of an approach that integrates different rural activities (nature conservation, agriculture, silviculture and hunting).

These various signs will be placed near sites that are completely restored, that is to say in spring 2016. Temporary signs could nevertheless be erected, on a less permanent support, while the work is being carried out in order to explain why it is happening.

In the Walloon region, 15 large-sized signs and 15 small-sized signs will be put up.

We also plan to erect one sign at each of the 8 French sites that are part of the project.

By definition, safety corridors for high-voltage power lines act as enormous firebreaks traversing the forest: they offer long-range views and may be an opportune place for observing wild fauna living in the forest environment.

In three places where a road crosses a high-voltage power line developed as part of the LIFE project, watchtowers or viewing shelters will be constructed as part of the project.

They will serve as rest and observation points for walkers and will be positioned in such a way to offer wide views of the countryside and wildlife so that large fauna and avifauna can be observed.

Deer will come there to graze and to bell, foxes will come to hunt voles on the moor, under the gaze of rustic livestock that maintain the moor through pasture. Shrikes nesting nearby will come there to hunt for viviparous lizards and little grebes could even nest on some of the newly created large ponds.

These shelters will also be ideal places to put informative signs relating to the LIFE project and the developments that are being carried out there.

As with the educational signs, we plan to set up these viewing areas during 2016.

In order to enable ELIA and RTE to continue the sustainable and positive management of the environment that the project intends to develop, we will be organising training sessions for the staff concerned.

This point is particularly important for the After LIFE programme. Indeed, at various levels of the company structure within the electricity transmission system operators, there is a need to ensure that staff have correctly integrated issues relating to biodiversity and have been able to accept them in their daily management practices. Training the staff thus provides a solution to this sustainability issue of the LIFE project investment.

These training activities for ELIA and RTE staff will be held regularly during the duration of the project both for the heads of the geographic regions and for people working on the ground who are directly responsible for the maintenance and management of the lines.

The training will be divided into four broad topics:

• 1. Species and habitats
• 2. Legislation
• 3. Management techniques
• 4. Creating partnerships with other people involved with the countryside

These training sessions will be organised by the LIFE project staff in collaboration with the environmental departments of the two companies and will provide explanations on the issues and benefits that high-voltage power lines can present for the promotion of biodiversity.

The staff from the environmental and technical departments of the two companies will be trained in recognising sensitive species and habitats, in the obligations resulting from European and national directives, in the management techniques that promote biodiversity and in the seasons during which interventions underneath the lines cause the least possible disturbance to habitats and species.

A directly applicable training module will be sent to these people so that they themselves can then pass on this training more locally, in France and in Belgium. An offer will be made to other European operators so that they might also benefit from the training module created for the LIFE+ ELIA project. This will be presented to them during decentralised meetings in different regions of Europe (20 meetings planned for the 5 years of the project).

The innovative and the exemplary qualities of the management of the electric line routes that the LIFE project is aiming to develop must be able to convince as many electricity transmission system operators, land owners and managers as possible in the 27 Member States.

It is vital that all of these actors can access a real tool that gives them suggestions of management practices that will benefit the spread of biodiversity and the logic of ecological corridors.

This tool must help them to modify their current management practices or to noticeably increase their understanding of the importance of taking into account biodiversity in their respective activities.

The drafting of these two vade mecums will be undertaken in close collaboration with the "environmental departments" of the two companies ELIA and RTE, as well as with representatives from public forest managers (DNF and ONF) and with groups managing private forests (NTF, SRFB and CRPF, but also more significantly ELO and FACE).

The two vade mecums, which have also come about as a result of our encounters with other European electricity transmission system operators, will be available as PDFs at the end of the project, both in French and in English.

The video is an excellent means of communicating messages and the old adage that says that a picture is worth a thousand words is absolutely correct.

A video of roughly 13 minutes will be produced throughout the LIFE project. It will illustrate the project, the restoration work undertaken and the partners associated with it by focusing on the human aspect and the extremely varied actors participating in the venture.

It will also help visualise the results of the management actions both in terms of the countryside and in terms of biodiversity.

This video will form a part of the educational material for the CRIE (Centre Régional d'Initiation à l'Environnement - Regional Centre for Environmental Education) in the Walloon region.

It will serve as a training aid for the sessions with ELIA staff on After LIFE. This video will therefore have to combine the more technical aspects for the staff from companies managing the high-voltage power lines with a look geared more towards the general public informing them of the issues surrounding new forms of management of the lines in the interests of safeguarding biodiversity.

It will be uploaded to this website as soon as the project has finished.

The project will be finalised and the results presented during two conference days that will explain the different techniques implemented during the project and the results achieved.

The first day will be for project partners and members of the general public who are interested in these subjects at the Walloon region level.

The second conference day will be aimed at professionals affected by the problems of safety in the high-voltage network as well as at the various administrations in charge of environment and biodiversity in the 27 Member States.

A conference more specifically focused on the French dimension of the project will be organised in Paris in partnership with RTE.

These opportunities to summarise the project will allow us to ensure that the management practices implemented will be promoted across Europe.