Gap Year News

Top UK wildlife identification course is set for closure

News item dated 3 Feb 2012

Birmingham University’s renowned biological identification course faces closure

Photo courtesy of pfly

The biological identification course run by Birmingham University, which teaches its students how to identify plants and animals in the field and to monitor changes in the environment, is the last of its kind in the UK and is now threatened with closure. The course has trained hundreds of top ecologists who have gone on to work at the UK’s most famous organisations including the National Trust, the Wildlife Trust and the Natural History Museum.

The university has told staff and students that the course no longer fits its research strategy even though both the certificate and masters level of the course are oversubscribed.

In response, students and alumni have mounted a campaign to stop the closure or to find another university to take over the courses. Campaigners believe that with the environment currently being so under threat there is a national need for the field skills provided by the course. The petition, set up by the group already, has a strong following and more than 1,000 signatures including that of Sir Ghillean Prance, the former head of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.   
Although there are many ecology courses in the UK, supporters claim that the Birmingham course is the only one taught primarily in the field and aimed at part-time students from around the country by running modules over long weekends.

The Field Studies Council said it understood eight organisations had shown interest in taking on the course, though it was too early to say which, if any, are serious contenders. The council's chief executive Rob Lucas remarked "we are determined to ensure that these courses don't die."    

Posted by Hannah Jones