Who We Are

Director Colleen Hope (nee Mainstone) CEcol, MCIEEM, BSc, PGCE
Colleen is a Chartered Ecologist and has worked as a full time ecological consultant since 2002. Colleen is experienced at surveying and assessing sites for a range of protected species including bats, reptiles, badgers, water voles and dormice. She holds survey licences for bats, dormice, great crested newts, smooth snake, sand lizard and barn owls. She holds Earned Recognition (ER) to level 3 and is a Registered Ecological Consultant (REC ecologist) under Natural England's Low Impact Licence.

Colleen has designed and implemented bat surveys for wind farm, road and major town infrastructure developments as well as numerous smaller scale redevelopment, barn conversion and domestic renovation projects. Colleen has successfully obtained over 150 European Protected Species (EPS) licences enabling developments to continue where bat roosts have been present. Colleen has held over 50 project licences to capture, ring and radio track bats. She is a qualified teacher and has run training courses in countryside management and bat surveying for over 25 years.

Director Dr Paul Hope BSc (Hons), MCIEEM
Paul worked as a freelance bat consultant for 9 years before joining ECS as joint director in 2012. He undertakes surveys and site assessments for a range of species and specialises in surveying and assessing sites for bats. Paul has recently completed a part time on a PhD at Bristol University researching the hibernation ecology of bats. He currently has three research papers published in peer reviewed journals.

Paul previously worked as a countryside ranger, forester and spent five years working in the construction industry.

Colleen & Paul both hold licences to capture bats, use an acoustic lure and fit rings and radio transmitters to bats. They each have over 22 years and 1400 hours of experience using radio telemetary to study bat colonies contributing to Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) and providing management advice on conservation sites. They have conducted research on most of the UK bat fauna with particular regard to Bechstein's, barbastelle, greater horseshoe & Natterer's bats.

Colleen & Paul have run numerous training courses for ecological consultancies, staff from Natural England and the New Forest National Park and Hampshire Bat Group. They train consultants for CL17, CL18, CL19 & Cl20 licences. Since 2005 they have been assessing the distribution of barbastelle, Bechstein's and greater horseshoe bats throughout the New Forest National Park and have undertaken similar surveys throughout the County. Link to to the radio tracking, training and research pages to find out more.