Training & Research

We have delivered training courses to members of the Chartered Institute of Ecology and Environmental Management (CIEEM) and also private companies on otter survey, ecology and camera trapping. We always have very positive feedback which reflects on the upbeat, friendly delivery of and novel course content.

Please contact us if you would like us to provide training to your company in otter surveys, camera trapping or Phase 1 vegetation surveys.

We will post details of forthcoming training courses here.

We have been using camera traps for many years and have a small number of long-term study sites. For otters in particular, the data from our camera traps has caused us to question how consultant ecologists (including ourselves!) identify and manage otter resting sites.

The IUCN Otter Specialist Group, in their Research Guidance state that: “At present, ecological consultants can do little more than guess at parameters of populations, and what the otters need, and there is an urgent need for accurate science-based knowledge to underpin ecological impact assessments”.

We have taken our initial curiosity about otter resting sites a stage further, and are part way through a research degree with Edinburgh Napier University, funded by Findlay Ecology Services. Prior to starting the research degree, we had been camera trapping otters for several years and had made some really interesting observations. We are using our former data, but are also increasing and formalising our sample size so that we can look at how often otters use resting sites, seasonality, use by groups of otters, how often they visit resting sites to spraint and any relationships between field evidence and use of resting sites. We are also taking a very close look at the efficacy of camera traps in otter studies.

We hope to be able to contribute to an evidence-based protocol for camera trapping otters and a base-line for practitioners to interpret their data.

Our blog will include nuggets of information from our research, so to see some examples of otter footage, and to find out more about our research, visit our blog.