Colette Hall

Research Co-ordinator, Conservation Evidence

About me

After graduating with a BSc in Zoology, I volunteered at WWT Martin Mere, helping out with day-to-day jobs in the grounds (building fences, digging holes), as well as a little in the visitor centre. However, my aspiration, at the time, was to work in conservation research; so, still as a volunteer, I started helping with WWT’s various swan projects – collating and entering data, and reporting on results. It was through this that I ended up moving south to join the team at WWT Slimbridge.

The vast majority of my role from then on was linked to waterbird surveys. I assisted with the running of the Wetland Bird Survey, then the Goose & Swan Monitoring Programme, which for the last few years of WWT running the project, I was Project Manager. I carried out a range of habitat and species specific surveys, including aerial surveys of Barnacle Geese, Common Scoter breeding surveys and various goose and swan surveys. I was also heavily involved in the planning, fieldwork and reporting of aerial surveys of waterbirds in UK inshore and offshore waters, which WWT helped to advance.

After over 20 years of working at WWT, I still enjoy working in the conservation world and now, even more so, I realise I enjoy encouraging and helping others to get involved too.

My role

My role will include helping to co-ordinate the development of Conservation Evidence projects and our input into other WWT projects, managing a few small projects, developing and managing systems to facilitate efficient and productive research, leading various groups, including to help co-ordinate our citizen science and capacity building work, and generally, putting my organisational skills to work where needed.

And although my new role is potentially a bit more administrative than before, I still hope to get out in to the field now and again.

Experience and interests

• Organisation, administration, communication (internal and external) and project management.
• Management, implementation and design of waterbird monitoring activities; data analysis and reporting for large-scale waterbird censuses.
• Coordination of large-scale volunteer networks; feedback to monitoring networks, including production of reports, newsletters and website feedback.
• Data management and processing of large datasets.
• Ecological fieldwork, including waterbird surveys (ground and aerial counts) and river habitat surveys (MoRPh and Riverfly).
• Team working, lone working, detail-oriented.

Publications

Cranswick, P.A., & Hall, C. 2020. Eradication of the Ruddy Duck Oxyura jamaicensis in the Western Palaearctic: a review of progress and a revised Action Plan for 2021–2025. WWT report to the Bern Convention.

Hall, C., Crowe,O., McElwaine, G., Einarsson, Ó., Calbrade, N. & Rees, E. 2016. Population size and breeding success of the Icelandic Whooper Swan Cygnus cygnus: results of the 2015 international census. Wildfowl 66: 75-97.

Hearn, R., Nagy. S., van Roomen, M., Hall, C., Citegese, G., Donald, Paul., Hagemeijer, W. & Langendoen, T. 2018. Guidelines on Waterbird Monitoring, AEWA Conservation Guidelines No. 9. AEWA Technical Series No. XX. Bonn, Germany.

Mitchell, C. & Hall, C. 2020. Greenland barnacle geese Branta leucopsis in Britain and Ireland: results of the International census, spring 2018. Scottish Natural Heritage Research Report No. 1154.

Smith, L.E., C. Hall, P.A. Cranswick, A.N. Banks, W.G. Sanderson & S. Whitehead. 2007. The status of Common Scoter Melanitta nigra in Welsh waters and Liverpool Bay, 2001–2006. Welsh Birds 5: 4–28.