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EXEC’S CORNER A warm welcome to ECT’s two-monthly newsletter for December. We have just returned from the British Ecological Society’s (BES) Annual Meeting in Edinburgh, where there is not yet any sign of the sort of frost pictured in the wintry scene above from Nash’s Field experiment in Berkshire. The conference has been a remarkable event - the largest in BES’s history with 1800 delegates attending in person and online - and the footfall at ECT’s exhibition stand as good as ever. Part of the reason for delegate interest in our stand was the two new virtual reality (VR) tours of long-term experiments (LTEs) that we have launched this year for the Llyn Brianne Stream Observatory in mid-Wales, and the Glen Finglas upland grazing experiment in west Scotland. These fully-immersive 360-degree-view tours of the LTEs with Steve Ormerod and Robin Pakeman respectively captured the attention of BES delegates who donned our VR headsets and felt ‘transported’ to these sites. To gain an understanding of how and why we produce these VR tours of LTEs, view this documentary video. The two LTEs featured are landscape-scale experiments and are especially relevant to those of you who are engaged in either speaking at, or attending, the upcoming Resilient Landscapes & Seas partnership symposium ‘Collaborating at Scale for Nature & People’ on 10-11 February 2026, also being held in Edinburgh. Delegate registration remains open until Monday 12 January via the link available further below and so there is still time for anyone to register and attend. On behalf of all trustees and staff here at ECT, may I wish you a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous 2026. Ben Sykes
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