The formation of the Tracking Mammals Partnership has brought
together the expertise of many different organisations and enabled
discussion to take place on some important issues, including
standardisation of survey methods, volunteer engagement, volunteer
health and safety, improving survey coverage across the UK and the
use of statistical techniques to analyse surveillance data.
Workshops have been held to examine these areas in more detail and
best practice guidelines and recommendations have been produced as
a result.
Mammal surveys are often carried out in particular areas of
the UK, with a variety of objectives, using different methods and
timescales and operating at different geographical scales. Many
surveys are also carried out locally level and look at presence, or
population size, of a species in a given area at a particular point
in time. The consequent differences in survey design mean that
survey results cannot be compared very easily between regions,
countries and species and, hence, opportunities to set the results
in a wider context have been lost.
The TMP has recognised that an important part of co-ordinating
a UK wide surveillance and monitoring programme for mammals
involves standardising, where possible, the methods used and data
collection and management, and has developed a set of
guidelines for
designing surveillance schemes.
Engaging with volunteers and managing volunteer networks
Most surveys operating within the TMP engage
volunteers
to collect the data, although some surveys use professional
surveyors and in others a combination of volunteers and
professionals has been found to be the best solution. The
organisations in the TMP decided when setting up the Surveillance
and Monitoring Programme that, generally, using volunteers was the
best way to obtain the quantity of data required, sufficient sample
sizes, and to obtain the best coverage across the UK. There
are, however, some problems in engaging volunteers to do survey
work, including their recruitment, providing adequate
training and maintaining their interest over a period of
time, at best many years if good survey results are to be
obtained. The increasing emphasis on volunteer health and
safety is also an important consideration. Following a
workshop, TMP and the NBN Trust have jointly
produced a best practice manual on
engaging with volunteers and managing volunteer
networks, which can be downloaded from this website.
The Tracking Mammals Partnership (TMP) consists of 25
organisations with an interest in carrying out surveillance on
mammals to assess population and distribution change over time. The
first TMP report, published in March 2005, provided an
overview of the work of the Partnership, but also
highlighted some problems associated with attempting to make
meaningful comparisons of results across surveys that
use different data collection and analysis methods.
There are many advantages in having a diverse approach to
mammal surveillance and it is not envisaged as being practical,
realistic or even desirable to unify all the schemes and have one
survey method or overarching survey for mammals. However, one
way of producing better surveillance information is to
standardise,where possible, the approach to statistical analysis of
data and share best practice and statistical expertise. A
statistics workshop (
workshop
record,
mammal analyses,
combining datasets,
outliers) was held to look at these issues
and to facilitate exchange of ideas and information between
statisticians.