Preparing for the Survey Season

Much like the flora and fauna we survey for, winter brings a period of downtime in the Ecologist’s calendar.

However, come Spring and Summer we are busy with ecological surveys, mitigation and enhancement work, often with unsociable hours. It is therefore key that we are fully prepared for the survey season. Every year, the team brainstorms an inevitably long list of winter jobs to ensure we are ready to go come the start of April.

Equipment: Inventory

We start with an inventory of all our equipment (e.g. reptile mats, night vision camera set-ups and bat detectors). We make sure all equipment is in good repair and send off equipment that needs fixing, or replace it if it can’t be fixed. We always make sure to invest in new equipment that will streamline our survey processes and provide accurate data. Most recently, this has included a thermal imaging camera, licences for UKHab mapping software and acoustic monitoring tools.

Making sure we have enough reptile sheets, dormouse nest tubes and great crested newt bottle traps/ nets for the survey season is also important. We often need to cut up more reptile refugia or order more survey equipment to make sure we can cover all of our sites.

Equipment: Biosecurity

It is imperative that we make sure all our equipment to be deployed is clean. This includes cleaning old material from dormouse tubes and buying fresh wooden inserts for those where the wood has rotted.

We also clean reptile mats, wellies/boots, bottle traps and nets thoroughly with disinfectant so not to spread disease across sites and between species. We manually remove and clean vegetation from bottle traps/nets to prevent the spread of invasive plant species between the ponds we survey. Given the importance of biosecurity, especially in light of Covid-19, these measures are also carried out between every survey we undertake, and all ecologists have access to an environmentally safe disinfectant spray which they use between site visits on their boots.

Sharing Knowledge: CPD

In autumn we ask the team what training would benefit them most over winter, and various members of the team then put together in-house training or we find external training providers where necessary. Our training is varied, and often incorporates practical, desk-based and transferable skills.

We try to focus on upgrade applications for the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) and protected species survey licence applications during this quieter period.

Sharing Knowledge: Biodiversity Records

During the year, we collect a range of useful data about protected species through our surveys and monitoring of a National Dormouse Monitoring Programme (NDMP) site. Over winter we collate this data and share it with the relevant local record centres and bat groups.

Quality Assurance: Reports

It is invaluable to ensure all our report templates are up-to-date and formatted to present our survey findings and recommendations as clearly as possible for our clients.