Stephen Ernst has been working in the ecological field for over fifteen years. He has a B.Sc and HND in Countryside management. He has worked for a variety of organisations such as Northumberland Wildlife Trust, BTCV, Royal Society for Protection of Birds and local Country Parks. Here he undertook practical conservation work, carried out otter (also constructing otter Holts), bird, badger, invertebrate and botanical surveys.
From 1996 to 1998 Stephen worked as a Warden for the National Trust on the Farne Islands. Here he monitored both the breeding seabirds population and grey seals.
Stephen spent several years working in Madagascar and continues to support a number of environmental projects there. This has been a mixture of practical conservation work, community based and biodiversity projects, including planting native trees, environmental education, and species protection. Stephen also undertook wildlife surveys such as bat, tortoise monitoring and radio tracking lemurs.
As an independant ecologist based in Aberystwyth he has been undertaking Phase one habitat surveys, bat, mammal, and ornithological surveys for a number of consultancies. Surveys have included breeding, wintering and migratory bird surveys. This involved vantage point watches, CBC, point count surveys and significant experience in Brown & Shepherd methodology to monitor breeding waders such as snipe, curlew and lapwing territories and specific surveys aimed at nightjar, red kite, barn owl and goshawk including nest searches and call broadcasting under licence. He regularly carries out both bat transect and emergence/dawn re-entry work. He is currently assisting with wintering bird surveys on sites in South and Mid Wales.
