At the Mammal Society we are the leading provider of mammal training courses in the UK with all of our courses led by experts in the field. We are always on the lookout for new trainers so if you think you have what it takes email us on training@themammalsociety.org
Find out more about our trainers below;
Alastair Hughes-Roden
![](https://www.mammal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Trainer-pic-A-H-R-300x225.png)
Amanda Lloyd
Trainer on Harvest Mouse Course
Amanda completed her BSc in Zoology at Queen Mary & Westfield College in 1997, before undertaking a PhD on squirrel ecology at Newcastle University in 1999. After her PhD, Amanda joined WildCRU (Oxford University) as a volunteer field assistant on a badger project and then became a field assistant on the Upper Thames Project. She was the project manager for a research project to investigate the distribution of harvest mice before leaving WildCRU in 2009 to undertake a marine ecosystem modelling post-doc at Wageningen University, The Netherlands. Although her post-doc was entirely focused on phytoplankton and mussels, Amanda did get to leave the office (occasionally) to survey for common seals in the Wadden Sea. Currently Amanda is a self-employed consultant ecologist working mainly with protected species (such as bats and dormice). She was one of the founder members of the Oxfordshire Mammal Group and is currently the dormouse officer for Berkshire Mammal Group. She co-created The Mammal Next Door, an online magazine about British mammals for kids (and adults!).”
David Wells
Trainer on Dormouse Ecology and Conservation Course and Dormice and Development
David is an ecological consultant based in Gloucestershire, specializing in protected species survey and mitigation. He has been interested in wildlife and mammals from an early age: one of his earliest memories is of seeing a Pyrenean Desman (in captivity, sadly) when he was three years old. Over the years he has contributed to county or national surveys for dormice, bats, harvest mice, hedgehogs, otters, water voles and water shrews as well as the Mammal Society’s atlas project. His involvement with dormice started when he attended a Mammal Society dormouse course in Cheddar in about 1988 – one of the courses he now leads. He has held a dormouse survey licence for over 25 years, and is a co-author on the Mammal Society’s forthcoming Dormouse Mitigation Handbook. He was also on the editorial panel for the Mammal Society’s UK BAP Mammals: Interim Guidance for Survey Methodologies, Impact Assessment and Mitigation in 2012. David is also involved with bat survey and mitigation, and is currently chair of the Gloucestershire Bat Group.
Debbie Alston
Trainer on Mammal Identification Weekend, An Introduction to Urban Mammals
Debbie is an experienced trainer who has run many natural history based training courses for a variety of audiences including the Mammal Society.She was one of the founder members of the Derbyshire Mammal Group in 2003 and has been the County Recorder since 2008 and Chair since 2014. She was co-author of the Mammals of Derbyshire, the County Mammal Atlas, which was published in 2012. Debbie has worked in a variety of conservation and ecology based roles for more than 20 years. She is now a part-time Lecturer in Biodiversity at the University of Derby and an Associate Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University teaching, amongst other topics, mammal identification and ecology to undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Derek Crawley
Trainer on Harvest Mouse course, Mammal Identification Weekend
Derek is an Independent Assessor and Verifier for land based Industries, and in his spare time he studies mammals. This includes watching otters at Leighton Moss and elsewhere since 1980. Derek’s achievements and activities include, being the founder and chair of the Staffordshire Mammal Group since 1999 and Staffordshire Mammal Recorder since 1998, as well as a past member of the Mammal Society Council. He also works with local groups and is the lead author on the Atlas of the Mammals of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Additionally, he has been surveying for harvest mice for local and national atlases and training for nest searches for the last 5 years.
Hazel Ryan
Trainer on Dormouse Ecology and Conservation, Water Vole Ecology, Conservation and Handling
Hazel has worked in conservation for 27 years since graduating from Royal Holloway, University of London with a degree in Ecology. Her current role is Senior Conservation Officer at the Wildwood Trust, Kent, a British wildlife conservation charity, where she manages captive breeding programmes for native mammals including water voles and hazel dormice. She has monitored dormice for the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme since 1995. As a committee member of Kent Mammal Group she co-ordinates small mammal trapping surveys and dormouse training in the county. Hazel is a trustee of Kent Bat Group, a Volunteer Bat Roost Visitor and bat care co-ordinator for Kent. Hazel in an experienced trainer, teaching courses on a wide range of mammal species and co-author of the Mammals of Kent, the county Mammal Atlas published in 2015. She has appeared in many television programmes to talk about mammals including Countryfile, Springwatch, BBC Breakfast, Inside Out, CBeebies and Nature Nuts with Julian Clary. She also enjoys travelling abroad to trap and handle small mammals and bats.
John Rhyder
Trainer on Mammal Tracks and Signs Workshop – Online
John Rhyder is an author, naturalist, wildlife tracker, ethnobotanist and bushcraft expert. He is certified through CyberTracker Conservation as Senior tracker having scored 100% on both track and sign identification and trailing or following the animal at the highest level of specialist. John is the only Senior Tracker in Northern Europe therefore the highest qualified in our region. John is also qualified as both an evaluator and external evaluator assessing the CyberTracker system in Europe. To expand his knowledge John has also been certificated in Germany, Holland and Spain. He has also worked on several tracking evaluations as second evaluator in the pacific north west of the USA. He also holds a university certificate in Species Identification and Biological Recording specialising in mammals, reptiles, bats, fungi and woodland plants and trees. As a writer John has contributed many articles for various publications and has authored three books, Track and sign a guide to the tracks and signs of UK mammals and birds, and Woodcraft a guide to using trees and timber, published by the History press. Additionally, he has produced The Animal Tracks Field Guide, which contains life sized drawings of Britain’s mammals and birds. John has been teaching since 1994 and runs his own training company Woodcraft School.
Penny Lewns BSc(Hons) CEcol CEnv MCIEEM
Trainer on Mammal Identification Weekend
Penny graduated from Royal Holloway College, University of London in the 1980s with a degree in zoology and a keen interest in mammalogy, thanks to mentor and Mammal Society stalwart Dr Pat Morris. Her professional career was kick-started when she landed a job based at Bristol University undertaking a National Badger Survey, involving a 5-year long road trip in a camper van! In 1990, Penny became one of the first Ecological Consultants in the UK, running The Badger Consultancy, later renamed Protected Species Ecology. She specialises in Ecological Impact Assessments and protected species surveys, particularly for badgers, bats and dormice. Alongside her professional work, Penny has had a long involvement with The Mammal Society: as a member, as well as serving on committees and running field trips. She has been a trainer with The Mammal Society for over 15 years, and is a part-time lecturer at School of Life Long Learning, Aberystwyth University.
Ric Morris
Trainer on Skull and Bone Identification of British Mammals Workshop
Ric Morris has been collecting and studying mammal and bird bones since his teenage years in the early 1970s. Having trained as a primary school teacher he spent the majority of his career working as a criminal investigator for Shropshire Council’s Trading Standards Service, on anti-counterfeiting cases, rogue builders and fraud in the motor trade. He currently works as a face-to-face membership recruiter with Shropshire Wildlife Trust, using the visual fascination of bones to start wildlife and conservation discussions with the public. Ric is a Mammal Society member, a committee member of Shropshire Mammal Group and has edited its quarterly e-newsletter since 2014. He has also written bone identification articles for The Mammal Society magazine Mammal News. He has attended several of the short zooarchaeology courses at the University of Sheffield enabling him to bring a zooarch perspective to his own bone ID courses which he has delivered up and down the Welsh Marches as well as in Scotland and Sussex. Ric is currently working on a comprehensive illustrated identification guide to the Skulls and bones of British mammals to be published by Pelagic Publishing. He is also to be found on Twitter as @Skull_Bloke, answering bone ID queries from all over the UK and posting about new additions to his extensive osteological reference collection.
Susanna Ramsey
Trainer on Half Term Barn Owl Pellet Workshop and Adult Barn Owl Pellet Workshop
Susanna has been involved in wildlife education for over 12 years. She has an extensive private collection of natural history objects relating to local wildlife. Explore Susanna’s website here. Since 2010, Susanna has used The Nature Collection, to create and run workshops in primary schools and nurseries in Surrey & South West London, for over 26,000 children, connecting the local wildlife to topics in the science national curriculum, such as Adaptations, Bones, Classification, Food Webs, Habitats and Life Cycles. Her passion is to inspire people of all ages, particularly children, to discover the intricate detail and wonders of the nature on our doorstep. In 2018, Susanna created a set of wildlife resources for the leading schools’ catalogue, TTS, to be used in the classroom and at home. During lockdown, she volunteered with the Primary Science Teaching Trust to develop some learning resources about UK wildlife, which are free for anyone to download and enjoy. In 2022 she began to volunteer at the Mammal Society and has created an excellent array of free resources for the Mammal Youth Hub. She has created an Introduction to Barn Owl Pellets for the Mammal Youth Hub and is currently working on an extensive Photographic Guide to the Small Mammal Bones in Barn Owl Pellets for the more serious mammologist. Susanna lives near Richmond Park and in 2010, wrote a book of Family Trails, containing 5 walks each with 20+ items to spot on the way. She has often worked with the Friends of Richmond Park to run workshops for their young Discoverers section.
Roisin Campbell-Palmer
Trainer on Beaver Ecology and Conservation
Dr Roisin Campbell-Palmer is a highly-experienced field biologist with numerous peer-reviewed scientific publications on beaver biology and ecology, including lead author of ‘The Eurasian Beaver Handbook’ and holds a PhD from the University of Southeast Norway on the importance of founder selection in beaver restoration programmes. As Conservation Manager for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland and Field Operations Manager for the Scottish Beaver Trial, she has considerable conservation project management experience including a wide range of data collection techniques (including field sign, GIS, remote camera traps, animal trapping and biological sample collection), with a proven track record of data handling and analysis, along with disseminating field work findings to peers and the broader public. Roisin is actively involved in several beaver restoration and feasibility projects across Britain. Roisin is currently a self-employed ecologist, advising several projects and organisations on beaver related projects throughout Britain including SNH, Devon Wildlife Trust, RSPB, Trees for Life, RZSS, and the Forestry Commission, and acting as a service provider on an ‘on-call’ basis for SNH to provide advice and practical support to landowners and managers with regards beavers.
Suzanne Kynaston
Trainer on Mammal Identification Weekend
Over a 20-year period, Suzanne has undertaken a number of wildlife roles throughout her career at the Wildwood Trust, ranging from volunteering with the Education department, to her current role as Conservation Officer. During this time, teaching others about wildlife and ecology has always been a huge part of her role, running annual courses on small mammal trapping and identification and dormouse handling. In August 2017, Suzanne took on the national studbook for the hazel dormouse and now co-ordinates with all of the captive holders by providing breeding recommendations. In addition to her employment, since 2001, Suzanne has volunteered for the PTES by monitoring dormice for the National Dormouse Monitoring Programme and providing people with the knowledge and experience required to gain their dormouse licence. Suzanne has been an active member of the Kent Mammal Group as their Secretary for the last 18 years and contributed to the Kent Mammal Atlas that was published by them in 2015, by undertaking small mammal surveys and by providing species accounts. Suzanne’s wildlife knowledge is not just limited to small mammals, she was co-author of ‘Bears of the World’ published by Blandford in 1995.
Bob Cowley
Trainer on Mammal Tracks and Signs Day
![](https://www.mammal.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Tracker_Bob-Talk-Title-crop-285x300.jpeg)
Bob has been involved in the Oxfordshire Mammal Group since its formation in 2014, currently serving as Vice Chair. He has been particularly involved with OxMG’s outreach and education work, organising public talks, both in-person and online, and establishing a dedicated YouTube channel to enable the talks to reach a wider (indeed world-wide) audience. But Bob’s personal obsession is identifying and interpreting the Tracks & Signs that all animals leave behind as evidence of their presence. And since the International Tracker Certification scheme (also known as CyberTracker) reached the UK in 2012, Bob has been one of its most active participants and advocates, working his way up to Track & Sign Level 3 by 2018. As well as devoting himself to learning all he can about this neglected ancient skill, Bob is also very keen to pass on his knowledge to anyone with an interest in the natural world around them. A good understanding of Track & Sign is an invaluable asset for any professional ecologist, zoological researcher or student, as well as adding an extra dimension to any walk in the country. In addition to the Mammal Society, Bob has led workshops for a variety of other organisations, including the Field Studies Council, the Woodland Trust, and the Oxford University Conservation Optimism Conference. He has also been invited to present papers to the International Tracking Symposium in both 2022 and 2023, and is in daily contact with elite trackers from all over the world, exchanging information and adding to this endlessly growing body of knowledge.
Dr Amy Louise Hall
Trainer on Bat Ecology and Grey Long-eared Bats; Ecology, roosts and survey techniques
Amy is the Director of Research and Training at Sangan Island Conservation which is based in the Bailiwick of Jersey. Amy has more than 20 years’ experience working with small mammals and bats in the UK and other Channel Islands as well as several field work studies that have been undertaken in South America and the Caribbean. Amy’s research has always focused on Bats, small mammals, trees, and habitats, and this continues to be the main theme of current research. Her MRes dissertation researched the use of small farm woodlands by bats, her LLM looked specifically at the protection afforded to bats under the English and Jersey legal regimes, and whether these jurisdictions with convention compliant. Amy’s PhD researched small mammal movement patterns in habitat mosaics.
Will Hughes
Trainer on our future Camera Trapping course
Will has worked in Higher Education for over 10 years, and has expertise in the fields of wildlife surveying and monitoring and conservation science. Will currently lectures and manages the animal-related degree programmes at Plumpton College in East Sussex (partnered with the University of Greenwich), which is based in the South Downs National Park. Will is passionate about the role that technology can play as a conservation engagement tool and its growing importance in citizen science. Over the years, Will has trained students in the use of a wide range of conservation technologies, from drones to thermal imaging cameras. However, he is especially interested in the application of wildlife cameras to monitor mammals and their activity patterns. Will has been an active member of the Kent Mammal Group committee since 2015, where he has facilitated grants and research for the group over the last 7 years. More recently in 2021, Will joined the Mammal Society Training Committee in 2021 and has since been working on developing a range of new courses linked to applications of conservation technology in Mammal surveying and monitoring.