Impact case study database

Yu’s research has had a large number of impacts on a global scale, including the direct impacts of NatureMetrics Ltd on commerce and the economy, which have been followed by downstream impacts via the effects of NatureMetrics on clients, practitioners, production, public policy and the environment.

Direct impact on commerce and the economy: NatureMetrics began trading in 2016, starting with the use of aquatic eDNA to detect Great Crested Newts at building sites. Related to this, NatureMetrics developed a filter kit for aquatic eDNA and filed a patent, now at international application Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) stage (WO2020128503A1). The company has grown very rapidly. By 2019, its third full year of operation, it was processing 4,750 samples from 92 clients and over 15 countries, with approximately 60% of revenue coming from commercial organisations, 20% from government, 10% from NGOs and 10% from grant-funded projects [S1a]. In 2020, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, it processed 3,285 samples from 90 clients [S1b], with approximately 68% of revenue coming from commercial organisations, 6% from government, 8% from NGOs, 10% from grant-funded projects and 8% from universities and research institutes [S1a]. By the end of 2019, it had doubled gross profit [S1b]. In June 2019, NatureMetrics raised GBP2,500,000 [S1c] in a Series A investment round that was oversubscribed by 2.5 times, valuing the company at GBP7,500,000 [S1d]. NatureMetrics then implemented a growth plan, which has been slowed but not interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Revenue in 2019 was GBP713,796, and revenue in 2020 was GBP1,000,976 [S1b]. The company's size in terms of numbers of people employed has also increased rapidly. As at December 2020, NatureMetrics had 33 employees (headcount 33, FTE 31.4), including 15 with PhDs (headcount 15, FTE 14.8) [S1e].

Impacts on clients, practitioners, production, public policy and the environment: NatureMetrics helps clients undertake work that would be far more costly, or outright impossible, without the company’s services. The eDNA sampling kits and analysis services offered by NatureMetrics make biomonitoring safer for clients and their employees to conduct in challenging natural environments. The following is a selection of leading examples of clients and spheres of activity that have benefited from NatureMetrics:

NatureSpace Partnership: NatureMetrics is a key service provider to and investor in the NatureSpace Partnership, a private company operating the UK’s largest biodiversity offset market. NatureMetrics’s eDNA service makes it possible for NatureSpace to rapidly survey hundreds of ponds to model the distribution of the Great Crested Newt, a species protected in the UK under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981. Builders in surveyed areas can buy a licence to offset the effects of developments on Great Crested Newt populations, the fee rising with their modelled impact on the newt. This arrangement reduces costs and risk compared to newt relocation, while also funding the creation of four new ponds per affected pond. As of 2020, NatureSpace have raised GBP1,000,000 and created 100 new ponds, operating across 40 Local Planning Authorities in the UK. As NatureSpace Partnership’s Chief Executive has stated, “ Without NatureMetrics’ technical expertise and early investment, we would not have succeeded” [S2].

Environmental Resources Management: NatureMetrics gives the multinational environmental consultancy ERM “ a competitive edge over consultants using conventional survey techniques alone,” as stated by ERM’s Chief Ecologist [S3]. A large part of ERM’s work consists of surveys of aquatic habitats to establish baselines for future monitoring (e.g. to detect pollutant spills), to identify offset sites and to select amongst alternative project sites. In 2016-17, ERM piloted NatureMetrics’s kits in Sierra Leone. Relative to their standard methods, ERM sampled more safely, covered a larger area, detected four times as many fish species and halved survey costs [S3]. In 2020, ERM used NatureMetrics for surveys in Russia and Serbia and is now considering eDNA for further projects around the world. As ERM’s Technical Director stated, “ ERM believes that eDNA provides both business and conservation benefits, and NatureMetrics role in developing the new technology has included assisting ERM to become a more informed consumer and user of eDNA” [S3].

Environmental charities: In 2019, the Freshwater Habitats Trust (FHT) used NatureMetrics’s kits to survey 21 New Forest sites where they had data from conventional surveys. Using eDNA, volunteers were able to detect more species and “ [a]t low cost, collected data in a couple of days from a network of stream sites that would otherwise have taken a conventional 2-3 person survey team most of the summer to visit,” as stated by FHT’s Director [S4].

Internationally, in 2018, Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) Peru surveyed a 390 km stretch of the Marañon River in Amazonian Peru and “ fully achieve[d] their survey goal of detecting the spatial distributions of six culturally and commercially important aquatic species…, and we exceeded our goal by also detecting hundreds of additional vertebrate species, which we can now start to take into account in designing a sensitive index of basin-ecosystem health….NatureMetrics has made it possible for WWF Peru to generate baseline biodiversity data much more efficiently and comprehensively,” as stated by WWF Peru’s Associate Ecosystem Services Research Officer [S5].

In 2020, Fauna and Flora International (FFI) collected aquatic eDNA in the transboundary Wonegizi-Ziama Massif Protected Areas between Guinea and Liberia. A total of 112 vertebrate species were detected, including the endangered White-bellied Pangolin. As FFI's Senior Programme Manager for West and Central Africa stated, “ The key benefits to FFI are increased biodiversity data…reduced survey costs…and ease of sampling.…[W]e can increase the…coverage of our sampling at a reduced cost, and we can more fully involve local people in conservation monitoring” [S6].

The British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) is using NatureMetrics’s metabarcoding service for arthropods to measure the efficacy of restoration projects in Polesia (a wetland running from Poland to Russia). Reduced costs allowed doubling of sample size from 120 to 240 sites. As BTO’s Senior Research Ecologist stated, “ Without NatureMetrics, we at BTO would not have had the capacity to carry out this part of the project, whereas with NatureMetrics, we anticipate an increased probability of success in achieving the aims of the Polesia project” [S7].

Regulatory standards-setting and end-user education: In her role as NatureMetrics’s first CEO, from 2017-2020, Bruce co-led a working group of a European Union Cooperation in Science and Technology (EU COST) action, DNAqua.Net, that submitted to the European Committee for Standardization the first European Standard related to eDNA [S8]. Bruce will also be on the steering committee of the soon-to-be-launched UK Business and Biodiversity Forum, a government-supported initiative exploring ways businesses can act to reverse biodiversity declines. In 2019, Yu wrote a contracted “Think Piece” for the UK Government’s Environment Agency for England to design an R&D strategy for incorporating DNA-based methods in the agency’s reporting [S9]. Lastly, in 2020, NatureMetrics was competitively selected as one of five small companies to join the UK’s High Speed 2 rail (HS2) Innovation Accelerator programme, the purpose of which is to accelerate the uptake of new technologies in building the HS2 railway. NatureMetrics was chosen to ensure the quality of HS2’s green corridor, including newly-created woodland [S10].