About Wolds Environmental Consulting Ltd

Based in the historic market town of Beverley, on the edge of the picturesque Yorkshire Wolds, Wolds Environmental Consulting is a research and management consultancy, founded by Steve Barnard in September 2019.

Steve is a professional environmental scientist with over 30 years' experience of applied environmental research and management of both freshwater and marine environments, across a range of public-, private- and third-sector roles. Now an independent consultant specialising in (aquatic) environmental assessment and management, he was previously employed as a Marine Policy Specialist at the University of Hull's internationally renowned Institute of Estuarine and Coastal Studies (IECS), where his work included:

• the development of methods for assessing the ecological coherence of MPA networks;
• the review of data aggregation methods for supporting marine biodiversity status assessments; and
• the assessment of the relative importance of different pressures arising from human marine activities across UK waters (creating the interactive PROMPT tool to implement the assessment methodology).

Steve developed another simple but flexible software tool (PAREJO), based on work delivered under the European-funded DEVOTES project, to allow expert judgement to be used to assess the potential impacts and relative importance of human marine activities in European waters. Other pan-European work delivered whilst at IECS of UHULL included a review and assessment of project delivery for the BONUS Project, and contributions to the TIDE project.