Urban gull surveys: methods and design

Tender description

Our overall objective is to develop a firm plan for surveying urban nesting gulls in the UK and Ireland. We anticipate: • A review of existing methodologies, including an evaluation of their advantages and disadvantages, with a primary focus on established land- and air-based techniques, and a secondary focus on novel and potential methodologies; • A review of current knowledge on distribution of urban nesting gulls; • Proposals for the most cost-effective ways to perform a census of urban nesting gulls, informed by the methodological review, with consideration of the trade-off between cost and effort and the point of diminishing returns; • Firm recommendations for the design and implementation of the surveys for the SNCBs, with full costs estimated and broken down by individual country / dependency (all within British Isles with the addition of Republic of Ireland); and; • Costs broken down by individual country / dependency (all within British Isles with the addition of Republic of Ireland); and • Ranges of costs presented according to differing preferred methodologies (e.g. cost if all covered by method A; cost if all covered by method B; cost if partially A and partially B; etc.). At this stage we are not seeking testing or ground-truthing of available methods, although reference to existing studies (including any readily available unpublished data) is welcomed.