The University of St Andrews Biodiversity Working Group

Welcome to the Biodiversity Working Group website. Some of these necessarily data rich pages have tens of thousands of species and habitat records, such as the Action Plan, the Biodiversity Dashboard and the Habitats Dashboard, and may take up to a minute to load the first time. Please be patient. It’s worth it.

The purpose of the Biodiversity Working Group is to write and update the University Biodiversity Strategy and the University Biodiversity Action Plan. We also facilitate and carry out the actions of the University Biodiversity Action Plan.

The Biodiversity Working Group also supervises the monitoring of the biodiversity on the University’s estate so that the University can reach its 2035 target of 60% of University land being managed with biodiversity as a priority, and for the University’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for biodiversity to be positive. This will mean increasing species richness, quality of habitats for biodiversity and increasing engagement with biodiversity on University land through time.

Monitoring is carried out through the Vertically Integrated Project module Biodiversity Literacy, where students organise and carry out the mapping of species and habitats, setting up and maintaining the monitoring systems, facilitating wider engagement and reporting of the final KPIs.

Visit the University sustainability page on biodiversity to find out about Vertially Integrated Projects (VIPs), what we are doing at St Andrews to be biodiversity positive, and how you can involved. You can also contact Sustainability Coordinator and Administrator, Amy Manvell, at [email protected] or Chair of the Biodiversity Working Group, Professor Will Cresswell, at [email protected] for more information.