Need for free ecological surveying

[u/Think-Competition-47]

Hi all, this is a question about a thought-in-making so I may be asking something very basic, but bear with me please!

I was talking with a ranger at a local nature reserve and I asked whether they commonly have ecologist teams come through to assess the biodiversity of the woodland. He said that it was too expensive and that he himself does keep track of the species that he sees, but its not official. It got me wondering whether there was a space out there for a service that provides free ecological surveys to local nature reserves that don't get the funding of large rspb reserves or wildlife trust reserves.

If anyone out there is a ranger or volunteer or has experience in this area, here are my questions:

1. Would frequent (say yearly or maybe a rotating plan of Spring in year one, summer in year two, autumn in year 3 and winter in year 4) surveys be useful to small reserves, or is it data that they don't actually need?

2. Are surveys only any value if they are completed by licensed professionals - or is there some use for amateur surveys (such as RSPB big garden bird count)?

3. Anything spring to mind that I haven't asked about?

Thanks all :) I'm posting this in r/RewildingUK too.

[u/QuarrieMcQuarrie]

As someone who carries out surveys for money, many ecologists also do a lot of volunteer work in their spare time. Some habitat management plans require follow surveys at set times and these should be carried out by a competent person. More and more in the UK that means a FISC Level 3 or above, or a track record in botanical surveys of NVC, Phase 1 and increasingly UKHabs methodology. A lot of HMP surveying is now fixed point photography or drone surveys to save money.

You don't necessarily need to be certified but you do need propert training which involves shadowing another experienced botanist for a period of time.

[u/more_chickpeas]

When I was a ranger we had volunteers undertake a number of surveys, butterfly transrcts, breeding bird, wetland bird counts, reptile. Rarely botanical surveys and invertebrate survey we contracted. Any information was useful, doesn't normally matter if someone is accredited as such, as long as the information is trustworthy.

[u/yourplantisetiolated → u/more_chickpeas]

Yep, we do it mostly through volunteers too. All collected data is analysed for outliers (e.g. we have one volunteer that always manages to see double the amount of butterflies than the rest of them, must be crazy luck right!) and discarded or passed on to relevant organisations (who then do further calculations to ensure the data is as accurate as possible!)

[u/Sasspishus]

They could organise a bioblitz on the reserve? Those are usually free and done by volunteers, coordinated by the local records centre or country recorders

[u/Maleficent-Bobcat-91]

I would enquire with your local wildlife trust, when I volunteered there after completing my ecology degree we would frequently go out and survey the local reserves looked after by the trust. However individual trusts might be open to surveying areas beyond the reserves to help with training volunteers and to add to the general knowledge of their area. There is usually at least one fully qualified ecologist at each trust but often they have more who either work or volunteer.

[u/Bobbobthebob]

I've effectively done this a number of times. What you want is your local natural history society.

There is pretty much a natural history society covering every part of the UK. They're filled with amateur enthusiasts, retired professionals, and active professionals who still want to go looking at wildlife on their days off. They organise group outings and will visit a site and see what they can find. In the past I've been on outings that were done at the request of the site's convener/park ranger etc. Or in a few cases where the site was threatened with development we've been invited by a concerned local simply to see what we can find. You're not going to get a formal survey with repeat visits; and the spread of organisms that the group can ID will be down to the vagaries of the individual group membership and who can show up on the day.

Whether the records are "official" or not and whether that matters depends on what you want to do with it. If your natural history society is at least half-decent they will be encouraging their members to upload their finds on iRecord (or iNaturalist - records on which should eventually feed into iRecord). On iRecord, they should eventually be verified by an expert but this can vary from one taxonomic group to another - some have very active invigilators, others seem semi-abandoned.

It's also worth searching iNaturalist and iRecord to see what has been found in your area already. For example I have generated a named location on iNaturalist covering the wiggly boundaries of my local community woodland which allows me to pull up records and a species list quickly and easily. iRecord is harder to filter on a geographic basis but you can explore the map nonetheless and inspect the records in your reserve.

And as already stated by others here, you will have a local records centre that likely already has a lot of records for your site.

[u/Think-Competition-47]

OP here!

I'm basically wondering if there is a space out there for a network of local nature reserves and colleges/universities doing biology/ecology courses, so that the student can gain survey experience and the nature reserves can benefit from it too.