Reclaim, Restore, Rewild (RE3) Update

Friends and colleagues – When we made the decision in May to postpone the Reclaim, Restore, Rewild (RE3) Conference until 2021 and combine it with the Society for Ecological Restoration’s (SER) 2021 World Conference and with the Canadian Land Reclamation Association (CLRA) National Conference, it was with the hope that by next year conditions with COVID-19 would have improved enough for a majority of our conference delegates to attend in person. Unfortunately, given ongoing global concerns around COVID-19 and a pattern of cases rising even after periods of decline, it seems unlikely at this point that an in-person conference with several excursions would be logistically possible, or safe. Today, we are announcing that the Québec RE3 Conference is officially cancelled for 2021; however, SER2021 will continue in a completely virtual format (see website for more details www.ser2021.org).

Our vision for RE3 was always to bring together the broad community of reclamation, restoration, and rewilding with a special focus on wetland restoration, thus the original partnership between SER, the Society for Wetland Scientists (SWS), and CLRA. With an in-person conference no longer viable, the envisioned networking between the three societies will be much harder to facilitate, so we’ve mutually decided to cancel the collaboration at this time, though we are still interested in trying to revive this collaboration for an in-person RE3, with all of the field trips and associated activities, in Quebec City once the COVID19 situation no longer poses a threat to travel and large gatherings by 2023 or 2024.   

We do have to close out the RE3 event financially with our current society partners, therefore everyone who has already registered for the RE3 conference will be receiving a refund. That said, all previously accepted RE3 proposals and abstracts are still welcome and considered accepted for SER2021, the 9th World Conference. We will be following up shortly with an email to provide more information about the process of your refunds, and SER will be in touch about shifting abstracts over to the SER world conference for those who are interested in staying involved. Please keep an eye on www.ser2021.org for the most up-to-date information and deadlines.

We are thankful to SER (including the regional chapters of Ontario and New England), CLRA, SWS, Université Laval, Québec Conference Centre, Conferium, and the conference team for their dedication to RE3.

  • Please note that the conference will be charged CAN$50 (approximately US$35) in administrative fees for every cancellation. For those who do not have the financial capacity to cover this administrative fee, you can make a request to us to waive the said fee. For those who are financially able, however, we appreciate your coverage of the administrative fee to help limit losses to the societies as we reconfigure the conference.

SER2021 CLRA Québec RE3 Conference – Organizing Committee

CLRA Joint Conference: 2021 Québec RE3 Conference: From Reclaiming to Restoring and Rewilding (CANCELLED)

  • June 19 - 24, 2021
  • Canada