Baker Consultants Ltd

Natural England Technical Information Note TIN069 - Assessing the effects of onshore wind farms on birds. What will this mean for developers?

Specialist ornithologists at Baker Consultants are carefully scrutinising the recently released guidance from Natural England on the survey of birds both before and after the construction of on-shore wind farms. It is possible that this guidance will have a significant impact on the design and implementation of surveys for new wind farms.

If you'd like to read it for yourself, you can click on the link above or download it as a pdf below. Let us know what you think by commenting on the blog. We'll be back to you with our analysis soon.

Of course we'd say this, but having sat down for our first team meeting of the new year things for the spring are starting to look exciting, so we thought we'd remind you that January is the time for survey planning.

The survey season starts with a vengance in March, (unless of course you're Susan who is out doing winter bird surveys in the snow every day this week!). And once March is here things get very busy very quickly.

Do you have sites that may require ecology surveys this summer? Sites with ponds, potentially harbouring reptiles and amphibians or breeding birds?

Now is the time to contact an ecologist and programme in the work, even if you're not expecting to need the report for six months or so.

Have a look at our survey guidelines here: http://www.bakerconsultants.co.uk/blog/2009/11/survey_guidelines

And look out for our survey calendar due to be posted up here soon.

All the best for 2010, we look forward to working with you.

It's a long time since we have had this much snow in December, so the team at Baker Consultants decided to go out in it. Derbyshire looks pretty impressive, what you can't tell from these photos is quite how cold the wind was!

Thank you so much to everyone who has made this year such a fantastic success for our new business, we could not have done it without your support.

Enjoy the sparkly season and we look forward to doing business with even more of you in the new year.

Our 2010 CPD schedule is attached here. It includes training on birds and windfarms, anabats and associated gadgets, public inquiries and contract management. Although this is mainly training offered free to our core team and associates, if you really fancy coming along, we might be able to squeeze you in!

Also, if there is a subject covered that you'd like us to provide training on, perhaps in your own business setting, get in touch and we'd be happy to arrange it. Sharing the knowledge is all part of what makes us tick.