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Ecologists spend hours wrestling with QGIS and regularly face tight Biodiversity Net Gain deadlines. Is it time to outsource your digital mapping?

I delivered a seminar at Ecology Expo 2026 for freelancers & small businesses in ecology who may not have in-house GIS skills or access to geospatial specialists.

On my stand at the Ecology Expo I have a panel with a map of Great Britain and Ireland on. When people come to chat to me I invite them put a dot on the map where they've travelled from. Not everyone put a dot and that's okay, there were many hundreds of delegates on the day so next time I'll try to beat my current total. I've barely unpacked from the event and I'll be doing a bigger roundup post next week but I just wanted to get the map completed and published. It's a grea

Open-source technology is quietly running the world. It's part of the critical infrastructure and hardware that are vital to many of our jobs and most people don’t realise it. Many of my clients use QGIS (mostly as I train people how to use it) and they’re drawn to it because it’s “free” ー not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s accessible and lets you road-test it for nothing before you embed it in your work, so why wouldn’t you?

If you want to see the count (total number) of features you have in a layer you don't have to open your attribute table to see the amount you can do it within your layers panel!

So, you work in the ecology sector but don’t use a digital data system yet? Breathe. You’re not alone. After all, it’s not that simple to switch to digital processes overnight. And if you’re thinking about it or need to do it, I bet two questions are going through your mind: Should I do it myself? Is it better to hire an external GIS training provider? You’ll find the answer to these by the end of this article.

✨It's free data Friday!✨ This week it's Sites of Special Scientific Interest ( SSSI's) & SSSI Impact Risk Zones to help developers, consultants and members of the public, who are preparing to submit a planning application. You can use the SSSI IRZs to consider whether a proposed development is likely to affect a SSSI and choose whether to seek pre-application advice from Natural England. This will allow any potential impacts to be considered within the planning application

Last week I did my first exhibition for me / Maptastic this week at the British Ecological Society Conference in Edinburgh. The run up to getting things designed and printed for the stand has been epic and it's been a steep learning curve! I can totally see why people do shell schemes for these things and if in future they're possible in the budget ill go for it. Also, I'm also only just tall enough to put those banners up by myself 🤣. After battling with banners I think m