The European Heathland Workshops developed after a meeting of French and British Heathland Ecologists convened by the French and British Ecological Societies and held at the University of Rennes Field Station at Paimpont, Brittany in July 1979. The interest that this meeting generated led to the 1st Workshop which was held in Aberdeen, Scotland in 1982. Further Workshops followed;

• University of Utrecht, Netherlands in 1985,
• Molslaboratoriet, Femmøller, Denmark in 1988,
• University de Rennes, Brittany, France 1992,
• University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain in 1995
• University of Bergen, Norway 1998.
• Orkney, 2001
• NNA, Germany, 2003
• Institute of Nature Conservation, Belgium, 2005

At first, the Workshops were primarily meetings of heathland research ecologists, but as much of this research is closely linked to conservation and management the attendance at the Workshops has widened to include all interested in heathlands, their ecology and their conservation. Those attending the Workshops now include research scientists, conservation managers, and both regional and national administrators.

A Network of those interested in European Heathlands now is being established. At first this will be those who have attended the Workshops or who were included in the Heathland Interest Register compiled in 1982. One of the current aims is to complete a new European Register of those interested in heathlands and to establish a European Heathland Network of which the European Heathland Workshops will be the principal forum. Once the Network is constituted it will possible to participate in a wide range of matters affecting European heathlands as a single body.