Best Practices for Monitoring Biodiversity

This workshop report summarises the fifth HERO workshop, on the 24th of March 2022, which focused on monitoring and evaluating biodiversity restoration. It was attended by 34 participants (15 in-person and 19 on-line)[AS1] . Cécile Girardin introduced the main questions surrounding monitoring and evaluation of biodiversity. Francesca Mancini, Mike Clark, Cecilia Larrosa and Emma Gardner then presented their insights into suitable methodologies and frameworks, and discussed the function and relevance of different biodiversity metrics. Finally, a panel discussion between Prue Addison, Camilla Burrow and Steve Wilkes explored the practicalities of implementing monitoring in Oxfordshire.

Three main themes emerged from the discussion:

• More local monitoring is needed, which will require additional financial and human resources.
• Citizen science provides a cost-effective monitoring tool but requires correction for spatial bias and variation in sampling effort, and must be verified by environmental record centres to ensure data reliability and legitimacy.
• It is important to maintain coherence between local, regional, and national monitoring schemes.

Download the report here