Published on
March 24, 2021

Innovative New Project Announced by NatureMetrics & Scottish Government

The Scottish Government and NatureMetrics are using innovative nature monitoring to report on progress towards global biodiversity goals. In this new project, the Scottish Government are progressing nature reporting by developing new landscape level nature monitoring using DNA.

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Innovative New Project Announced by NatureMetrics & Scottish Government
The Scottish Government and NatureMetrics are using innovative nature monitoring to report on progress towards global biodiversity goals. In this new project, the Scottish Government are progressing nature reporting by developing new landscape level nature monitoring using DNA.

NatureMetrics are pleased to announce that they have won an innovative project to develop habitat-scale DNA monitoring in support of the Scottish Government’s international biodiversity reporting commitments. The project is being commissioned by the Scottish DNA Hub on behalf of the Coordinated Agenda for Marine, Environment and Rural Affairs Science (CAMERAS) and NatureMetrics has formed a multidisciplinary and skilled team including advisors from University of East Anglia, University of St. Andrews, The Biodiversity Consultancy, Forest Research UK, WSP and Macquarie University.

“We are extremely excited to deliver this world-leading piece of work. We feel passionate about playing our role in reversing the current global nature crisis. Only by setting clear, measurable targets and having robust, scalable, affordable monitoring can we hope to turn the tide of nature loss. We believe that DNA-based monitoring technology has a key role to play and look forward to being able to demonstrate the ability of this technology to help answer this urgent measurement challenge.” says Dr Bastian Egeter, Head of New Product Development at NatureMetrics.

“The questions posed by the work are ground-breaking and globally relevant and will provide a unique example of habitat-scale biomonitoring with the aim of not just providing species-level data but moving beyond that to deliver informative metrics which can be aggregated to support post-2020 biodiversity monitoring and reporting requirements.” says Katie Critchlow, CEO at NatureMetrics.

The Project Manager, William Duncan of Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA) said, “Once we can measure and monitor nature, we can set targets to protect and restore it. We’re excited to be breaking new ground globally – using 21st Century Technology to overcome the challenge of delivering high quality, scalable data on our natural world”.

The project will involve:

  • Developing a DNA monitoring Road Map to identify key capabilities, limitations and knowledge gaps of DNA-based monitoring
  • Delivering a Prototype DNA habitat monitoring programme in Scotland that will be tested in multiple habitats using a variety of sampling methods and analysis approaches.

This project provides a way for national governments to report their biodiversity progress with useful metrics for global target setting and reporting of progress.

Follow updates on this project and more by following us on LinkedIn on our @NatureMetrics page.

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