Applied PhD 2024: Beastly Traces and Shared Spaces: encountering human-animal communities in the Sonian Forest

This project allows the integration of insights about the coexistence of people and animals in the Sonian Forest in the past into contemporary forest management, in order to reconcile nature management, heritage management and recreation in a more sustainable way. The Sonian Forest harbours a unique wealth of archaeological landscape relics that testify to the development history of the cultural landscape in Brussels' largest forest area (LANGOHR 2009: 192-194). The location of these landscape relics in an ancient forest area has contributed greatly to their unique survival. Today, this also contributes to their vulnerability. A main goal of this project is to valorise the fundamental knowledge developed during the first part of the project on the role of human-wildlife coexistence in shaping this unique cultural landscape in the form of management guidelines and map material that Environment Brussels, the forest manager of the Brussels part of the Sonian Forest and partner organisation within this project, can use to sustainably integrate the management of this heritage landscape into global forest management. Finding a balance between nature management, heritage management and recreation allows the cultural heritage in the Sonian Forest to be safeguarded and used to create awareness about the active role of animals in creating our cultural environment past and present and as an asset for Brussels to inspire Brussels residents and other visitors with the rich cultural heritage of the Sonian Forest.