The effect of Covid 19 on the day to day life of a placement student – Sophie Gregson
The effect of Covid 19 on the day to day life of a placement student
Guest Blog by Sophie Gregson
During this time of uncertainty there has been many constraints introduced as the safety precautions across the world increase. Up until Monday the 30th of March I was still able to achieve access to my site Shankill Cemetery, however following government guidelines it shut that night for the foreseeable future. I am lucky enough to have completed surveys of the site every Monday for the past two months meaning I still have a small amount of data I am able to compare and write about, however I do not have enough data to make a clear comparison across the months like I originally planned.
With the new government guidelines in place restricting travel and visits to pubic areas the site was forced to shut, the government have not made any indications as of yet as to when this quarantine will be over. With this in mind it has left my project with many uncertainties such as, will the site be open again before my placement is completed in May? Will the work being organised for the site still be carried out considering no one has access or is allowed out into the public domain without good reason?
I was able to compete two months worth of data before the quarantine was brought into place this will allow me to still complete a biodiversity report on the Shankill cemetery site. The data is currently stored on our hard drive in work which we are currently working towards achieving access to. Having this data really is a life saver as it means my report isn’t at risk, it may not be exactly what I wanted to achieve but at least it won’t be for nothing. With the data I have I will still be able to give solid recommendations on how to improve the biodiversity of the site. In the next coming months I was going to add to my survey the type of flowers and insects such as butterflies found at the site, however I didn’t get to collect solid data on this due to it being to early in the year. I was also going to set out camera traps to see what sort of mammals lived on and around the site however this also will not be achieved. The data I’ve collect so far is all bird based so the report I will be completing will be based around this.
