BSc Conservation Biology booklet for Sept 2017 entry

The latest pdf guide to the BSc Conservation Biology course is now available. You can download it from here. It is aimed at students who are thinking about starting the course in September 2017.

 Important note for students planning to join us in September 2018
An updated version will be available in early 2018 for those students who are planning to join us in September 2018. We cannot guarantee all the details in the document attached here will still be valid in a year from now. So, although you can use this current document to give you an idea of what the course will be like, make sure you check our website nearer the time. You will also be able to download the 2018 version once we have published it on this blog site.

Here is the document for 2017 entry. You can read it directly here if you want, or else click on the "BSc Conservation Biology Booklet" link to download a copy to keep on your computer or reading device.

BSc (Hons) Conservation Biology Booklet 2017

Devon Wildlife Trust Placement – September 2016

by Amber Connett & Harry Shadwell

Now September is over, we are coming to the end of the survey season here at Devon Wildlife Trust. The last few weeks of the season have been spent completing Marsh Fritillary larval web surveys across sites in North Devon. These larval surveys give a much better view of the breeding population and are less weather dependent than the adult surveys we completed back in June. Sadly, during our surveys we noticed it doesn’t seem to have been a great year for this threatened species on our sites, though we did still find a few large caterpillar colonies!

Marsh Fritillary caterpillars found at the base of a
Devil’s bit-scabious plant. Photo by Harry Shadwell.

We also finished our Riverfly surveying this month. The results of our surveys have now been sent off to the Riverfly database and will be used as part of their long term river monitoring scheme. All of our survey results indicated that section of river was healthy and no major pollution event had occurred – great news! Bradworthy Primary School also joined us for a riverfly day, similar to the one we held in July. Sadly, the river levels were too high for the children to get in the water but they were able to sort and identify samples we gathered.

Our surveys of the Avon Valley site at Brimridge Farm came to an end this month after completing a final pitfall trap survey. We found many different invertebrate species, including a wolf spider, three species of ground beetle and lots of harvestmen! Soon we will be pulling all our survey results together in a report which will be used by the landowner and DWT advisors when considering management of the site.

We also attended a training day at the beginning of the month run by the DWT Volunteer Management Officer. This training event taught us all the aspects of managing volunteers as part of a conservation project, which will be very helpful to us if we work in this sector because volunteers contribute a large part of conservation effort.

As the survey season is now over, we will be mostly focussed on analysing our results gathered over the summer and putting reports together – much to do!

Devon Wildlife Trust Placement – August 2016

by Amber Connett & Harry Shadwell

Getting ‘in touch’ with nature…

Amber and Harry are currently on placement with Devon Wildlife Trust. Every month, they are posting a summary of what they have been doing. here's the latest...

During August we have taken part in a wide range of activities within the Trust, including various training courses. One of the training courses we completed was based on environmental education. It was a very fun day at Wembury Marine Centre which demonstrated ways in which we can engage both children and adults with nature. The other training course was based on safe guarding which taught us all the different things that must be considered when you are holding an event or working with children and vulnerable adults.