Consultancy - Analysis and Advice

We offer extensive knowledge of conservation grazing combining ecological insight with practical know-how.

Our team have been involved in major conservation grazing schemes at a number of nationally important sites including Hadleigh Park Olympics Legacy, Thorndon Park and Epping Forest. We have links to an unrivalled network of partners in the environmental, agricultural and public sectors. Furthermore, as part of Essex County Council's Place Services, the project can access an array of specialists covering ecology, arboriculture, historic environment, landscape design and planning.

Innovation

We are always on the look-out for new technology and ways-of-working that can improve the impact our livestock have on the habitats and landscapes they are helping to conserve. That's why we were the first in the UK to try the Nofence virtual fence system on our goats in 2019/20. Not only does the system allow livestock to graze areas where conventional fencing is not practical, it also allows site staff to find animals quickly. It can be combined with GIS software and ecological monitoring to provide powerful insights in to grazing patterns to avoid 'under' or 'over' grazing of target habitats.

We are currently collaborating with Essex University and Nofence on a pilot study looking to extend the capability of the collars so that feeding behaviour of livestock maybe detected and mapped.

Quality

We are not a conventional commercial livestock operation. We can work with you to design complex grazing regimes that are tailor-made to your site's conservation objectives.

Furthermore, we are habitat ecologists who are highly expert in the use of ESRI ArcGIS software so we can help develop vegetation maps to set accurate baselines against which the efficacy of grazing can be monitored. In combination with our GPS tracking technology, GIS can be further leveraged to analyse grazing patterns and produce 'heat maps'.