Conservation With Forestry BSc (Hons)

The first year of the BSc (Hons) Conservation with Forestry degree follows the BSc Forestry curriculum. You will cover a broad range of topics, including tree biology and the identification of tree species, forest ecosystems and ecology. You will also learn how to integrate biological, social, political, economic, and historical considerations into forest management decisions.

From the second year, you begin to focus on conservation principles and practice, examining the relationship between ecosystems, humans, and biodiversity and what is driving the extinction crisis and threats to species and habitats. You’ll be introduced to the tools and skills used by professional conservationists, such as conservation monitoring, how to estimate population size, and the indicators used to measure conservation state.

The third year delves further into the patterns and processes in forests, examining natural and human disturbances. You will explore key concepts of wildlife conservation including, for example, animal distribution, foraging theory, vulnerability to extinction, and the role of apex predators.

A wide choice of optional modules in topics allows you to tailor your studies to your interests, specialising in areas such as land use change and conservation, renewable energy, or environmental issues. Your final-year research project provides further flexibility and has led to students focusing on forest soils, mycorrhizal fungi, forest hydrology, forest ecology, monitoring of conservation outcomes, for example.

A large proportion of your studies on the BSc (Hons) Conservation with Forestry are delivered outside on field studies in and around Wales.

An optional week-long field course in your second year enables you to see firsthand the conflict between land use for economic production and conservation and biodiversity outcomes. We visit a wide range of forest and woodland ecosystems along with other terrestrial habitats with management spanning production, restoration and conservation objectives. In the third year, you can also attend a tropical conservation field course in Madagascar to learn about the causes of biodiversity loss in the locality and the conservation interventions being implemented to address these threats.

For those wishing to get direct work experience, you have the option to undertake short-term or longer-term placements, including a sandwich placement with a range of management firms across the UK and abroad. In the past, our students have had the opportunity to spend a year studying at the University of British Columbia.

As the longest standing Forestry department in the UK, Bangor University is one of only three universities across the UK training foresters to degree level. We place particular emphasis on developing your practical, interpersonal, professional, technical, analytical, and problem-solving skills to prepare you for whatever and wherever your career takes you. Our world-renowned research and strong industry links provide opportunities to hear about and see for yourself how theoretical aspects of forestry, environmental science and conservation are applied in practice.

The programme is taught by expert researchers in the fields of forest and conservation sciences. Current research projects in the UK include assessing the suitability of different kinds of woodland as habitat for fallow deer and comparing the performance of root systems of native British trees in increasing the flow of rainfall to the soil. Overseas, we are exploring the role gender in parkland system restoration in the Sahel.