All about monitoring!

Thursday 17th December 2020

Todays subject was monitoring - three really good speakers with very interesting backgrounds. Owain did a good job of persuading us that conservation of the smooth snake was a great idea! Rob is doing bioacoustic monitoring of birds/bats/insects - I never really thought about it but it really makes sense and he had some great examples of work that he has done on monitoring robins in urban and rural environments. They shout louder and at a higher frequency in urban areas - makes sense as they need to be heard! Rick explained how we can conduct monitoring of wildlife in the water - not so easy! I learnt a great deal - its not something that I particularly want to do - although I enjoy the citizen data science monitoring that I do - Mammalmapper and Bird track. I will also take part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch in January as well. However is it obvious that I need to know something about GIS - Geographic Information Systems - basically mapping software - apparently everyone in conservation needs to use it - something to add to the list!