Our Services

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The services WEST provides range from wildlife studies, including bird and bat studies for wind and solar energy, to applying technology to environmental questions, including using machine learning to study wildlife populations. Within these pages, you will find information regarding all of our services along with project highlights and publications we have developed over decades of helping our clients succeed with their projects.

Bat & Avian Research & Monitoring

WEST is a leader in bat and avian research, monitoring, risk assessment, and permitting, offering clients a complete combination of ecology and statistics to successfully navigate and fulfill project development and reporting needs. Our collective knowledge of ecology and habitats is unequaled, with teams of experts at the top of their fields who have research and mitigation experience spanning North and South America.

Bats

We offer a wide range of expertise on bat issues, from sensitive species surveys to habitat risk assessments.

Eagles

WEST has decades of experience conducting eagle studies, risk assessments, and assisting wind developers and operators with eagle regulation compliance.

Whooping Cranes

WEST offers clients a full range of biological services for projects involving whooping cranes, including surveys and baseline studies, permitting, mitigation, and compliance issues.

Prairie Grouse

WEST employees have unmatched experience addressing the ecological issues surrounding prairie grouse throughout their ranges.

Rare, Threatened, or Endangered Avian Species

WEST has extensive experience working with avian species throughout North and South America, including species protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, Endangered Species Act, and state-listed and sensitive species.

Environmental Permitting

With offices across the nation, WEST’s experts have experience and local knowledge in every ecoregion to help obtain the permits needed to move projects forward. From Habitat Conservation Plans to NEPA, we have clients covered with economical, scientifically credible, and defensible permitting documents.

Endangered Species Act Compliance

WEST is a recognized leader in the field of Endangered Species Act consultations and is adept and nimble at navigating the regulatory, legal, and political landscapes of conservation planning for threatened and endangered species.

Eagle Conservation Plans

Utilizing state-of-the-art methods and analyses, WEST has developed reasonable, practical, and, when necessary, sophisticated risk assessments for eagles that can include habitat modeling and take estimation.

National Environmental Policy Act

WEST has extensive consulting experience in environmental review and regulation compliance, including work under the National Environmental Policy Act.

Solar Permitting

From initial project site characterization studies to post-construction monitoring, WEST can help clients effectively navigate the complex, ever-changing matrix of federal and state environmental regulations.

Statistics & Biometrics

Drawing on decades of experience, WEST employs a suite of cutting-edge and defensible statistical tools to solve complex and evolving problems across a variety of industries. Data have never been more readily available and the need to analyze those data has never been more present. WEST works to connect our clients to their data using advanced modeling and data visualization techniques.

Model & Data Fusion

Data fusion and modeling effectively helps industries and individuals determine the extent of the effects of actions to a resource. Our wealth of experience assessing the impact of land use changes to vegetation and wildlife includes estimating and predicting fatality rates with collision risk models and rare event modeling for Habitat Conservation Plans and Eagle Conservation Plans.

Predictive Analytics & Forecasting

Making decisions involves learning from the past and anticipating the future. At WEST, we formalize this process by combining data, models, and experience to make predictions that can help guide the decision-making process.

Statistical Communication

The fields of ecological statistics, scientific computing, and quantitative data science move quickly. Many wildlife biologists receive some general training in these areas as part of college coursework but often feel out-of-touch with the latest and greatest tools.

Technology

WEST continues to be a leader in developing innovative, creative, and cost-effective approaches for studying environmental resources. We seek cutting-edge opportunities to apply technology in a rapidly changing environment, providing end-users data solutions that are tailored to fit their needs and answer the question at hand. Our approach to technology focuses on practical solutions to the following:

electronic data collection
software and application development
eDna studies
unmanned aerial vehicles
cameras and other remote sensing solutions
custom machine learning/artificial intelligence analyses

Unmanned Aircraft Systems

As industry leaders in impact assessment and resource monitoring, WEST’s experts work to identify, evaluate, and implement technological solutions to design and execute state-of-the-art scientific monitoring and survey methods to best meet client’s needs. We have applied technological solutions to natural resource challenges utilizing unmanned aircraft systems, also known as drones, in wildlife studies.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning

WEST has a unique set of skills applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to clients’ natural resource questions. We have a large staff of statisticians, computer coders, database experts and administrators, and biologists who collectively can design studies and collect necessary data, manage large datasets, and develop machine learning neural networks, as well as application-specific software solutions.

Geographic Information Systems

Geographic information systems (GIS) empower users to visualize, question, analyze, store, edit, and share geographic information and interpret data to understand relationships, patterns, and trends in relation to positions on Earth’s surface. Our team of GIS experts integrate GIS into our strong foundation of environmental and statistical expertise to produce high-quality, interdisciplinary geospatial products and solutions.

Vegetation & Reclamation

WEST’s scientists are experienced with vegetation management and monitoring at projects throughout North America. With our unique combination of ecologists, biologists, and statisticians, we can design studies, collect and analyze field data, and provide sound inferences based on the results.

Ecological Restoration

Good land stewardship contributes to protecting facility assets from erosion, flooding, ponding, and noxious weeds, all of which can impact site accessibility and efficient and cost-effective facility operation. Facility development and operation requires a long-term commitment to managing lease-held land. Our restoration ecologists work side-by-side with client project teams to protect assets from environmental risks through a strategy that is sustainable for the life of the project.

Vegetation & Plant Sampling

WEST staff have extensive experience conducting rare plant assessments and surveys for county, state, and federal sensitive species, as well as Endangered Species Act listed species. This experience includes evaluating project impacts to rare plant species and communities and designing and implementing mitigation measures to address such impacts.

Wetlands & Water

Wetlands Monitoring & Permitting

Wetlands and other water resources are protected under the federal Clean Water Act and often state and local regulations. WEST’s wetland scientists are up-to-date on the most recent and constantly changing regulatory definitions and processes.

Fisheries

WEST has extensive experience in the statistical design, analysis, and reporting of a broad spectrum of fishery and fishery-related projects. We help our clients develop long-term monitoring programs, survey designs, and statistical analyses that help with research and management of important fisheries.

Marine Biostatistics

WEST scientists have extensive experience working with marine mammals with more than 22 peer-reviewed publications regarding marine mammal projects, mostly in northern climates in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas.

Wildlife Research & Monitoring

Wildlife conservation and sustaining populations in the face of increasing land use and environmental change is often a top priority for agencies, industry, and the public. WEST uses a combined statistical and ecological approach to provide clients with objective and scientifically credible results to address numerous wildlife concerns. Our ecologists and biometricians are highly experienced in study design, data collection, and data analysis for a variety of surveys, species, and geographic areas. Additionally, we employ the very latest capture techniques, field equipment, and study methodologies. Our scientific expertise includes all aspects of studies designed to estimate the size and range of wildlife populations. This expertise includes use of capture and recapture, distance sampling, direct counts, radio telemetry, remote sensing, and aerial survey methods for all types of wildlife populations.

Aerial Surveys & Telemetry

WEST combines statistical and ecological expertise in the design and conduct of aerial survey and telemetry studies for a wide range of species, including bald eagles, golden eagles, prairie grouse species, Dall sheep, mule deer, elk, moose, pronghorn, walrus, bats, and polar bears and other marine mammals.

Big Game

Sustaining big game populations in the face of increasing land use and environmental change is a top priority for agencies, industry, and the public. WEST has the experience and expertise needed to provide clients with science-based solutions to big game management and conservation challenges.

Detection Dog Services

WEST staff has expertise and experience with detection dogs and can provide guidance, direction, and implementation of wildlife surveys using dogs. WEST biologists have developed a high-quality training program for detection dogs to execute a variety of wildlife surveys, including bat and bird carcass searches at renewable energy facilities.

Herpetology

WEST offers a full range of biological services to address amphibian and reptile surveys, baselines studies, permitting mitigation, and compliance issues.

Threatened & Endangered Species

Working with all stakeholders, including industry, state and federal agencies, permitting agencies, and environmental groups, WEST has developed a portfolio of successes addressing stakeholder needs and helping to ensure the future of threatened and endangered species.