James Pearce-higgins

Biography

James is a member of the senior management team of the British Trust for Ornithology responsible for providing strategic leadership of the science of the organisation. Working with Andy Musgrove and Rob Robinson, James provides strategic oversight of BTO science, which encompasses both monitoring and research. BTO organises volunteer-based and professional surveys to assess changes in the abundance, distribution and demography of bird populations, and of selected non-avian taxa. It also leads on the analysis of these data, conducting research to understand causes of population change, the processes that underpin observed ecological patterns, and to inform what is required to manage species and habitats sustainably. In addition, James specifically leads BTO's climate change research. This involves documenting the impacts of climate change on UK biodiversity, undertaking projections of the likely future impace of climate change on species' distributions and abundance, and informing the development of climate change adaptation. In recent years, James has led five multi-organisational climate change research consortia funded by Defra, Natural England and CCI, as well as many BTO projects. In 2014 CUP published Birds and Climate Change. Impacts and Conservation Responses, which he co-authored with Rhys Green. James has also written contributing papers for both MCCIP and LWEC climate change report cards. From 2010-2014 James led the Population Ecology and Modelling team and was responsible for the BBS research programme, which not only informed potential improvements and additions to the BBS survey, but developed new modelling techniques to understand the drivers of population change, and to improve predictions of future abundance. James now chairs the BTO/JNCC/RSPB Breeding Bird Survey Steering Group. Prior to this, for eleven years he worked in Scotland for RSPB, leading a wide-range of upland research projects.

Research Interest

Population Ecology