Presentations from ECAF events available

Over 200 people recently attended events on the new Environmental Co-operation Action Fund in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness.

The Environmental Co-operation Action Fund is a new £10 million scheme which is part of the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP).  The purpose of this new competitive fund is to encourage the development and delivery of landscape scale environmental projects by paying facilitators to initiate and enable co-ordinated environmental actions on multiple land holdings in a project area.

Funding is targeted to deliver the following priorities:

• Habitat and Degraded Ecosystem Restoration
• Conservation of Vulnerable Priority Species
• Control of Invasive Non-Native Plant Species
• Deer Management
• Catchment Management for Water Quality
• Physical Restoration of Water
• Natural Flood Management
• Woodland Creation

At these events, representatives from the Scottish Government, Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH), Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) and the Forestry Commission Scotland (FCS) provided brief introductory presentations.

Download ECAF event presentations.

The presentation from the Woodland Creation Priority breakout session is also available.

After a brief question and answer session focussing on general scheme issues, delegates had the opportunity to take part in breakout sessions run by SNH, SEPA & FCS. These sessions were an opportunity for participants to discuss the details of the individual scheme priorities with the agencies that developed and will administer the scheme.  

For more information please visit the Rural Payments and Services website.

You can also email ECAFBusinessSupportMailbox@gov.scot with any queries.

The first application window closes on 15 January 2016, but there will be subsequent rounds throughout the life of the current SRDP.

Connect with others interested in applying

If you are interested in cooperating on a project you can add a Cooperation offer to the Scottish Rural Network website including information on your proposed project and what you are looking for in partners.

We’re also encouraging people interested in applying to the fund to add a Contact Card to our website to allow others to connect with you.

To add Cooperation offers and Contact cards you first need to register on the Scottish Rural Network website.