Ecological Consultants Association of NSW Annual Conference 2016
8 August 2016
The entire EPS Ecology team recently attended the Ecological Consultants Association of NSW (ECA) Annual Conference at Bowral in the Southern Highlands. The theme of the conference was ‘New Insights in Ecology’ and covered such topics such as:
- Ecological applications of time series satellite data;
- Assessing tree hollows in woodlands;
- Vegetation classification and mapping in NSW: strengths and weaknesses of contemporary methods;
- The pros and cons of ‘strategic offsets’; and
- Restoring ecological communities: what’s really possible and how long does it take?
Interesting aspects were covered in these topics respectively including:
- Mapping wet and dry extents of wetlands using satellite data;
- How accurate is tree hollow identification from the ground by an ecologist vs inspection by tree climbers?;
- The various schools of thought on regional vegetation mapping in NSW;
- Whether small remnant areas are actually higher in value from a biodiversity representativeness perspective; and
- Whether restoring ecological communities from disturbed environments to a ‘natural’ state is possible.
Overall the presentations were very informative and raised many questions in relation to the current ecological consulting environment and ongoing legislation evolution in NSW and implications moving into the future for ecological management and development projects.
EPS’s Toby Lambert (Director – Ecology) has been a Councillor of the ECA for a number of years and EPS is highly supportive of the contribution of the ECA to ecological consulting in NSW.
For information on the ECA go to the following link:
