After a gap of seven years (the 10th National Heathland Conference (NHC) took place in 2008), the Surrey Wildlife Trust coordinated the organisation of this year’s conference. As the number of attendees over the three days demonstrates, this was a popular event, and is currently the only national gathering that brings together in one place site managers, practitioners, conservation and other government agencies staff, NGOs staff, consultants, contractors, academics and many others interested in heathland conservation. Attendees highly valued the opportunity to exchange information and to network among colleagues, and to visit and learn about heathland sites new to them.
This document is a compilation of the papers produced by the speakers and the workshop leaders at the Conference. Unfortunately, we were not able to obtain papers for all the talks or workshops. The talks were edited for consistency and formatting and, where necessary, the authors were contacted for clarifications, but it should be noted that the papers have not been “peer‐reviewed” in terms of their scientific quality. They are a record, sometimes with added background information, of the presentations and discussion at the conference.