Consideration of terrestrial invertebrates in ecology projects
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Invertebrates are a major component of terrestrial ecology (for example, they represent 98% of all known species in Scotland) and are the foundation of most ecosystem services, yet are often overlooked by professional ecologists.
This webinar will introduce participants to a best practice approach to ensure terrestrial invertebrates are considered appropriately. Although specialist expertise is required to undertake invertebrate surveys (for which there is a skills gap in the UK ecology sector), this webinar is aimed at project managers regardless of entomology experience so that they can build this into survey programmes following a staged approach.
This webinar will cover how to assess whether detailed targeted invertebrate surveys are necessary for a project, and the approach to such surveys if they are deemed necessary to inform a robust ecological impact assessment. It will include an overview of some survey methods and the contexts within which results may be considered.
Webinar speakers
Chris Cathrine BSc (Hons) MCIEEM FLS FRES FRSA
Technical Director, RSK Biocensus
Chris Cathrine has over 20 years’ experience as a professional ecologist. They have designed and undertaken many invertebrate surveys and assessments for a range of purposes, including major infrastructure, mixed use developments, renewable energy projects, land use change, rewilding, condition monitoring of protected sites, identifying new qualifying features for sites of special scientific interest, academic studies and conservation research, as well as media and other interpretation. They also rationalised invertebrate priority species on the Scottish Biodiversity List to facilitate public body reporting under contract to SNH (now known as NatureScot). Chris runs other training courses, such as ecological impact assessment for CIEEM, and taught invertebrate biology and wildlife legislation topics as an external lecturer at University of the West of Scotland for two years. Chris has authored many publications, the majority of which focus on invertebrates. They previously worked as assistant conservation officer (Scotland) and planning casework officer (UK) at Buglife and founded and ran Caledonian Conservation Ltd for 15 years.
Featured business
RSK Biocensus
RSK Biocensus is a leading ecological consultancy with a network of more than 700 highly skilled and experienced UK-based ecologists. The company joined RSK in April 2019.
Webinar series: First Thursday Club
The First Thursday Club webinar series is a monthly scientific, specialist-led webinar that focuses on best practices relating to the natural environment and how these could affect RSK and external businesses. Created by RSK Biocensus, RSK’s ecological business, the lunchtime webinar series has proved enormously popular and successful since its inception in August 2020.
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