Ecology & Natural Environment

We’ve developed the technical and scientific expertise to help you protect the natural environment surrounding your project. This is the essence of true sustainable development.

Built environment projects have become increasingly mindful of animal and plant habitats. Our Englobe team’s diverse range of experts can provide you with the analysis, strategic advice, and practical support you need to make the right decisions for your project.

Our team’s specialty services extend over multiple disciplines in aquatic, marine, and terrestrial ecology. Our natural science services include

• Developing management programs for wildlife populations
• Wetland evaluations and aquatic ecosystem assessments
• Natural Environment Level 1 and 2 reports for aggregate applications
• Species at risk surveys and permitting
• Fisheries mapping and habitat profiles
• Baseline and environmental assessments

Englobe’s ecology and natural environment experts cover a host of disciplines, including wildlife management and natural sciences, sediment and erosion control, fisheries, wetland evaluations, and forestry. In Canada, we’ve facilitated client projects through extensive work with federal, provincial, and local regulatory representatives. As always, our goal is to deliver rigorous natural science reporting, in a cost-effective and timely manner, to every client.

Habitat Assessments

A habitat assessment is often the starting point in a natural science investigation. This analysis characterizes the general ecological community in an effort to screen for species at risk, identify any species of concern, and facilitate future land use planning or remediation.

Our Englobe natural sciences team relies on a combination of geographic information systems (GIS) tools, government database reviews, and field investigations to determine whether a target species might be present in the area. This comprehensive information is later used to support baseline studies, environmental assessments, permit application, closure planning, and species at risk studies, among other project steps.

Biological Data Collection

Biodiversity matters. Our team can help you protect the natural environment while driving your development, demolition, or roadwork project – no matter its size.

Biological data collection is critical to executing a comprehensive natural science investigation. Data collection can range from simple absence/presence inventories to data collection on body size, growth, age, sex, movement, health, population size, and breeding habits. Once collected, this data is critical to support additional phases such as environmental impact assessments, baseline studies, species at risk studies, fishery studies, and other analyses. We also provide ecotoxicological data collection services.

Our team of biologists has worked right across Canada – including remote and northern areas - and conducted biological investigations in terrestrial, aquatic, and marine ecosystems. With thousands of hours of field experience, our team has the expertise to collect data for the full range of biological taxonomies, including birds, mammals, fish, amphibians, reptiles, plants, fungi, insects, and aquatic invertebrates.

Technical surveys

Our experienced Englobe team has conducted many Species at Risk surveys for major mining, aggregate, infrastructure, and roadwork developments, large-scale demolition projects, and government installations, and as part of biological research studies. These surveys support many project objectives and requirements, including compliance with provincial and federal legislation, due diligence for environmental liability, facilitating the creation of biological inventories for an environmental impact assessment or other natural history study, and meeting provincial due diligence and management requirements for development projects.

Our work has taken us right across the country – including a considerable number of projects in remote and northern regions – so we’re uniquely qualified to deliver projects across a wide variety of ecosystems and environments.

Over the years, our expert geomatics and thematic mapping team has developed extensive expertise in environmental sciences (biophysics and technical surveys), energy, geology and transportation, as well as a superior ability to integrate multisource spatial reference data.

By bringing together geomatic specialists and graphic artists, our team creates high-quality documents based on the specific requirements for every project production phase (maps, work for schools, scientific illustrations, promotional materials).

Our teams of highly-qualified staff stand out through their ability to adapt, innovate, and meet the highest quality standards in the industry.

Bathymetry

For aquatic and coastal project environments, our team can provide precise, state-of-the-art bathymetric surveys. We’re skilled in the use of a broad range of single and multi-beam echo sounders, combined with inertia platforms, inertial navigation systems, and high-precision GPS, to ensure accuracy in all environments.

For over a decade, our team of hydrography professionals and technicians has successfully completed a wide range of major projects, with an approach that’s closely tailored to our clients’ particular environment. We take into account the constraints of your specific environment - whether your project involves an existing facility or a new build, dredging, or surveying as part of engineering works.

Above all else, our hydrography team values quality and excellence. From bathymetric surveys to the production of our deliverables, our process is highly standardized to ensure optimal quality and to meet (and even exceed) the strictest requirements.