Making your plans land: how to use behaviour change techniques as an ecologist

Join this webinar to explore how behaviour change approaches can help ensure ecological plans are actually delivered in practice, not just written well.

Whether you’re working on Biodiversity Net Gain, construction-phase mitigation, or the day-to-day management of habitats in country parks, nature reserves and other sites, success often depends on the actions of people: contractors, land managers, visitors, developers and organisations. This session introduces practical behaviour change tools and shows how they can be applied to everyday ecological work—from improving compliance on site, to supporting long-term habitat management, to encouraging positive behaviours from visitors and stakeholders.

Designed as an accessible session you can join from the office or field, it will focus on simple, usable ideas that can strengthen real-world ecological outcomes across sectors.

Please note that this webinar will not be recorded

Ecologists spend a huge amount of time crafting habitat plans, mitigation proposals and more, but success often depends less on the technical detail and more on whether people follow through.

Developers sticking to 30-year commitments, contractors delivering on-site, land managers maintaining habitats over time, and organisations embedding ecological commitments into everyday operations; these are all human behaviours, and they can make or break your plans.

In this session, you’ll hear from Brian Heppenstall, the Education and Careers Manager at CIEEM, Mia Hartwell, a communications and behaviour change specialist with practical experience in food and farming, and Dr Alina Congreve who brings expertise in applying ecological policy and practice in real-world settings, including work on HMMP and cross-sector collaboration.

Together, they’ll introduce you to straightforward tools from behavioural science and show how they apply directly to everyday ecological challenges.

Using real examples, we’ll look at what works, what doesn’t and how a straightforward model called EAST can help you design processes and communications that make the “right thing” to do the easiest thing to do.

• Understand why ecological outcomes depend on human behaviour across the project lifecycle, from design through to long-term management.
• Identify common behavioural barriers in ecological work including implementation gaps, poor follow-through, and misaligned incentives.
• Apply simple behaviour change tools to improve the delivery of plans, stakeholder engagement and project outcomes.
• Gain practical ideas to strengthen implementation of BNG, mitigation and habitat management in real-world contexts