I reviewed recent trends of acoustic surveys of wildlife. The following six topics are summarized. 1. Characteristics of animal call, 2. Equipment for collecting acoustic data, 3. Visualization of acoustic data, 4. Detection of animal calls from recorded data, 5. Classification of taxa by machine learning, 6. Application of automated recording technology to wildlife research. Autonomous recording units and automated processing are promising tools for objective and efficient wildlife surveys in environmental impact assessment.

This paper briefly reviews current methodology and practices of the environmental DNA (eDNA) metabarcoding approach using a universal PCR primer pair MiFish, which co-amplifies a short fragment of fish DNA (around 170 bp from the mitochondrial 12S rRNA gene) across a wide variety of taxa. This method has been applied to biodiversity monitoring using eDNA shed from fish and, coupled with next-generation sequencing technologies, allowed to perform massively parallel sequencing of several hundred eDNA samples simultaneously. Since the publication of its technical outline in 2015, this method has been widely used in various aquatic environments in and around the six continents, and MiFish primers have been demonstrably shown to outperform other competing primers. Additionally, I introduce the latest information on the government-led initiatives of biodiversity monitoring using MiFish eDNA metabarcoding.

The environmental impact assessments are conducted to the projects that “changes the shape of the terrain or that involves the construction of a new structure, or that is engaging in other similar activities” by the procedures in accordance with the Environmental Impact Assessment Law. After the construction of the project by the proponent, the constructs should be used for the original purposes in accordance with the way and method that settled during the assessment. We consider the some actual examples of the way and method after the constructions.

As researches on the community acceptance of woody biomass power plant are not sufficient, surveys were conducted to reveal it by analyzing occurrence of disputes, complaints, the level of impact perception and annoyance. From a newspaper article survey, 8 reports were hit by using keywords with “biomass and opposition”, including an article reporting the odor issue. Among 21 questionnaire sheets from municipalities, complaints occurred in 3 cases where local people concerned about noise, vibration due to lumber carrier vehicles, safety of lumber storage etc. The statistical analysis based on field surveys showed that the correlation was found between the distance and impact perception. However, results tend to be different in the two cases, suggesting that they are affected by site characteristics particularly of topography.