Senior Ecologist Vicky Armitage, a founder member of the Northumbria Mammal Group, has recently contributed to an important new publication – the culmination of an ambitious project to produce a book about the mammals of North East England. It is the first account of all the mammal species across the region since 1864 – a gap of 150 years.
Dr Peter Shepherd recently took part in a series of interviews for a new exhibition at the Brussels Natural History Museum. The interviews are screened as part of a new exhibit at the museum on urban biodiversity. Peter’s contribution to the exhibition is about the wildlife found in urban parks.
There are now numerous detectors available to help ecologists monitor bats, but what are their limitations and how good are the data that they produce? BSG has been working with Bristol University to try and come up with some answers.
When the Bat Conservation Trust’s (BCT’s) “Bat Survey Guidelines” were published in 2007, wind farms were excluded because there was little knowledge or experience of surveying to inform a wind farm proposal. The guidance documents that did exist (principally the “Eurobats” guidance and Natural England’s guidance notes (TIN051 and TIN059)) are quite open-ended with regard to survey methods and effort and there are discrepancies between them.
