Taking To The Skies For Nature’s Recovery

At Sheffield & Rotherham Wildlife Trust we are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to work for people and nature. Recently we have taken a big step forward technologically by branching into using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV)  – more commonly known as drones – to monitor our reserves and measure our impact. 

Thanks to a Resilient Futures Grant from Drone Deploy we have been able to purchase a drone and get the licences and agreements necessary to put it to good use on our reserves. Our experienced land management team helps choose the right flight times and locations to minimise any disturbance to wildlife.

Focus on Natural Flood Management

Our first priority with this new kit is to use it to assess and evaluate our Natural Flood Management (NFM) work in the River Sheaf catchment area. It is a considerable challenge to measure volumes of water in the landscape, as well as areas of re-wetted soil accurately and effectively on the ground. By taking to the skies and getting aerial imagery for our reserves and project sites, we can get a better perspective on the impacts of our work in the environment. In turn this data will be key to understanding the effectiveness of NFM in protecting homes from flooding, at the same time as creating habitat for threatened wildlife and restoring natural ecosystem functions. 

“By taking to the skies, we can gain a new perspective on our impact – helping us protect homes and communities from flooding while restoring vital ecosystems.”

With a strong evidence-led demonstration of the impact of natural flood management we will be able to promote and advocate for wider acceptance and adoption of these practices. Hopefully this will enable us to stretch our influence beyond the areas that we directly manage, and support neighbouring landowners to adopt NFM work on their land. In this way we can create a network of interventions across catchments that have the chance to both dramatically reduce the risk of flooding to homes downstream and to create wild, diverse and functioning ecosystems in the upstream regions.

We are really excited to be breaking into the high-tech world of drone work and have really high hopes for our Natural Flood Management project. But this is also only the beginning of our journey with UAV technology, as having our own drone is opening up a whole new avenue for monitoring and measuring the impacts of our habitat management work across our reserves. It is a long road ahead, with many exciting opportunities to explore, and we are flying high with excitement to see where our first forays into the world of birds-eye monitoring takes us.

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Thanks to a Resilient Futures Grant from Drone Deploy, we have been able to purchase a drone and secure the necessary licences and agreements to put it to good use on our reserves.