Thirty-eight people representing 22 organisations assembled at the AEEC to discuss the future of biodiversity monitoring and surveillance on the Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas and across the wider Republic. All of the talks heard can be accessed on our Resources page. Many participants remarked that it was an excellent day, and a fantastic opportunity to learn about the full spectrum of biodiversity monitoring happening across Cyprus.

From mouflon monitoring, to the latest applications of biodiversity data in the UK, the topics covered a vast array of species groups, and represented a diversity of approaches to monitoring.

The afternoon session focused on the results from a pre-workshop questionnaire that had sought to establish individual and organisational biodiversity monitoring priorities, with a particular focus on building capacity. This questionnaire approach followed a successful format that has been used elsewhere (see Pocock et al. 2015). The questionnaire asked individuals to assess around 30 statements about monitoring, ranking them in order of their importance. For example, for some individuals capacity building through volunteer recruitment and training was most important, whilst for others it was monitoring Natura2000 sites, or establishing data systems and protocols.

The results from this questionnaire activity was the subject of a lively debate in the afternoon, with the summary results adjusted throughout the discussion in order to produce a consensus view, from those in the room, of capacity building priorities for Cypriot biodiversity monitoring. The RIS-Ky team are working on writing up both the questionnaire responses, and the consensus activity, as a peer-reviewed paper as I type!

Thank you to all of those who took the time to attend the workshop, and who shared their opinions on biodiversity monitoring with our project.