About Ecophylla Consulting Inc
Background and Ecological Expertise
Rob Willson is the owner of Ecophylla Consulting Inc., a firm that specializes in ecological and geospatial assessment of the natural environment. Rob has more than 25 years of applied experience working with Species at Risk in Ontario and has extensive experience conducting ecological studies and habitat assessments, particularly on endangered reptiles, amphibians, and birds. As part of his work on these species, Rob has obtained multiple authorizations and overall benefit permits under Ontario’s Endangered Species Act, as well as completing numerous Environmental Impact Assessments, Natural Heritage Studies, COSEWIC Reports, and Recovery Strategies.
Geospatial Expertise
In addition to ecology, Rob has a wide range of expertise in geospatial applications, as he has been using GIS and GNSS (aka GPS) to map locations and habitat of Species at Risk for more than 20 years. Rob has been using DJI’s M300 enterprise drone since 2022 with LIDAR (R2A), Infrared (H20T), and RGB (P1) sensors to generate accurate, high-resolution 3D point clouds, digital elevation models, and orthophotos.
Geospatial deliverables can include a multitude of formats, such as point clouds (laz), cloud optimized GeoTIFFs (COGs), ESRI geodatabases and shps, cad drawings, etc, as well as being provided to clients via secure links to imagery and data viewable online in a browser using G3W-QGIS Server, Potree, and PostgreSQL-PostGIS.
Degrees and Certifications
- MSc in Ecology/Animal Behaviour (UofG)
- BSc in Pure and Applied Ecology (UofG)
- Drone Pilot-Advanced Operations (sRPAS)
- Managed Forest Plan Approver (MFPA/MFTIP)
- Wetland Evaluation (OWES)
- Ecological Land Classification (ELC)
- Butternut Health Assessment