Having been a client of ours for quite a few years now, it’s been great to witness ecology consultancy, Baker Consultants, go from strength to strength, from a constant stream of new team members joining the ranks to their innovative ecoacoustics work making both local and national news. 2024 has already been a great year for them, and we’re only five months in! So, what have they been up to?
As part of their two-year DEFRA-funded ecoacoustics project, Baker Consultants have been doing a lot of work with soil health, highlighting the importance of protecting our soil to better protect the future of our ecosystems. Their work has been spread far and wide, having made it on local BBC News as well as national BBC Breakfast.
It’s thanks to their presence in the mainstream media that organisations such as The Country Trust have been getting in touch with them about soil-related projects. The team recently partnered up with The Country Trust for their Plant Your Pants initiative. Apparently, burying pants is a long-used technique by scientists the world over to get people engaged in the science of soil health – who’d have thought it? Similar to Baker’s motto of “the noisier the soil, the healthier the soil”, The Country Trust’s motto is “the more disintegrated the pants, the healthier the soil”.
The Plant Your Pants programme was designed by The Country Trust and a number of scientists, teachers and parents so they could get children involved at every stage and get them learning about the importance of soil health from a young age. So, there’s a lot of digging fingers in soil and mucky children to get the point across, and sure enough, it works!
The Baker Consultants team joined The Country Trust and a group of local primary school children out on the field to share their knowledge on soil health; a rather new and unexplored audience for them. Bringing along their soil listening technology, the team invited the children to listen to the sounds of the earth beneath their feet.
With habitats dwindling and biodiversity declining, Plant Your Pants is a super important initiative and getting children educated and involved at a young age will (hopefully) do wonders for the future of farming, and the planet as a whole.
Carlos Abrahams, Director of Bioacoustics, and most recently dubbed ‘King of Bioacoustics’ following his inclusion in The ENDS Report Power List 2024, sat down with The ENDS Report’s editor, Jamie Carpenter, to delve into the fascinating world of ecoacoustics on the ECO Chamber podcast.
During their thought-provoking conversation, Carlos covered the significance of soundscapes in ecological assessments, emphasising how listening to soil can provide valuable insights into biodiversity and habitat quality. He introduced listeners to the basics of bioacoustics and ecoacoustics, and provided an exclusive sound snippet of noises from underwater and underground.
It was a fantastic opportunity for Carlos to share the important work the team at Baker Consultants have been doing with soil health, and how applications of their innovative technology can support more traditional ecological survey methods to provide more robust scientific data collection. This, in turn, will support farmers and help us to build a more sustainable future of farming.
Listen here 🎧
The team have also recently embarked upon a number of significant site visits to organisations such as First Milk, The Devonshire Group and Ruinart in France, conducting cutting-edge ecoacoustics research to shed light on the intricate relationship between sound and ecosystem health.
From the pastoral landscapes of First Milk’s dairy farms to the sprawling estates of The Devonshire Group and the serene vineyards of Ruinart, each location offered a unique acoustic tapestry for them to explore…and probably a few glasses of wine too 🤫
Through their meticulous research, Baker Consultants aims to uncover valuable insights into the impact of human activities on wildlife, the health of ecosystems, and the effectiveness of conservation efforts. Collaborations with such notable organisations underscore Baker Consultants’ commitment to pushing the boundaries of ecoacoustics research and advancing our understanding of the natural world.
Their relentless dedication to excellence and innovation in ecological consultancy has earned them a prestigious nomination for Medium Consultancy of the Year in the esteemed CIEEM Awards.
This recognition highlights their outstanding contributions to environmental conservation and sustainability, as well as their commitment to delivering high-quality services. From their ground-breaking ecoacoustics research to community engagement initiatives like Plant Your Pants, Baker has demonstrated a steadfast commitment to protecting and preserving our planet’s biodiversity.
Being shortlisted for this esteemed award not only honours their achievements over the last few years, but also underscores their position as leaders in the field of ecological consultancy; a testament to their tireless efforts and unwavering dedication to making a difference in the world of environmental stewardship.
And to top it all off, they once again found themselves in the mainstream media last month! Journalists at The Guardian newspaper joined Director of Bioacoustics, Carlos Abrahams, out on the field at Rothamsted Research as part of their soundscape series. Carlos spoke to them about the ecoacoustics research that’s being carried out with scientists from the University of Warwick, where they’ve been exploring the sounds of the living soil beneath their feet.
Thanks to their feature in The Guardian, their work was also covered on BBC Radio 5 and CBBC Newsround! Having now found themselves in the mainstream not once, but twice, in the last year, word about ecoacoustics and the importance of soil health is making its way up the ranks, and rightly so.
There’s plenty more that we can shout about when it comes to our friends at Baker Consultants, but it’d end up being a very lengthy blog! So, we’ll leave it there, and finish up by congratulating them on their shortlist in this year’s CIEEM Awards, for which we’ll be keeping our fingers crossed 🤞
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