Background and aims

Appreciation of the scale and potential impacts of the global biodiversity crisis is reflected in the Convention on Biological Diversity and in many of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals and their associated targets, with commitment to action to preserve biodiversity highlighted in policies at local, regional, and national levels across most of the world. Subsequently, there has been significant interest in increasingly widespread and novel methods of environmental management, as well as new monitoring methods to identify at-risk environments and quantify the success of our well-meaning interventions. However, the development and deployment of innovative monitoring and management methods requires individuals with access to suitable skills in species identification, taxonomy, and ecology.