Members of the public are involved increasingly in environmental and wildlife monitoring. This has clear
environmental benefits in terms of the contribution to long-term datasets and monitoring, and it also
yields social benefits, both to the participants concerned and to the wider community. However, there
is concern that participation is not spread evenly across different social or ethnic groups in society, as
is the case for other forms of volunteering. In this paper, we seek to develop a better understanding
of the motivations and barriers affecting participation in wildlife monitoring, through a study of public
participation
in
wildlife
monitoring
schemes
in
the
UK.
We
integrate
information
from
interviews
with
representatives of organisations running the schemes with the results of surveys of participants to identify
organisational
and
personal
perceptions
of
motivations
and
barriers,
and
quantify
the
socio-economic
bias in participation.