Ben works as part of the team overseeing habitat creation and infrastructure maintenance at ANT’s Chew Valley projects, alongside supporting and coordinating our volunteers. He has many years of experience in ecological surveying and stakeholder engagement, and has worked with various forest restoration projects from the Kinabatangan floodplain in Borneo to Canada’s Great Bear Rainforest. With a PhD in forest conservation technology from the University of Bristol, Ben brings his expertise in GIS, drones, and other grassroots technology to the mapping and monitoring of biodiversity and other ecosystem services at ANT’s sites.

Ben is particularly interested in engaging local communities in the co-design and management of restoration projects, and the potential role of citizen science in long-term environmental monitoring across the Avon catchment. When not staring at maps, Ben can often be found repairing old bicycles or falling off climbing walls.