It was an early start and a long train journey, but I put the time to good use and made lots of progress in writing up my MMU Mammal Survey. The conference was held at the British Ecological Society's HQ at Charles Darwin House, just a short walk from Kings Cross station. I arrived early, so had time to work my way there slowly and stop for a coffee en route to perk me up a little after my 5:30am alarm call.
The conference was a unique blend of citizen science and invasive species, so fit perfectly with the work I have been doing on my traineeship with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. It was interesting to hear about other organisation's experiences of using volunteers to help in the fight against invasives. Many organisations, like my project, are using members of the public to carry out surveying and monitoring work, and to gather data to be collated to improve our knowledge of certain issues. The distinction was also made between these Citizen Scientists and so-called "Citizen Killers" who carry out a different but equally valuable role involving killing plants or despatching squirrels/rats/mink.
It was also great to meet people and be able to put faces to names, such as the team behind the PlantTracker app that we have been using to collect invasive plant data in Yorkshire. There were also colleagues from the NBN Gateway and the Environment Agency that were all keen to share experiences. It was a really enjoyable day and a great opportunity to network with like-minded people.
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