Designing a survey that can be used for long term ecological monitoring requires careful planning because the level of resource commitment in such surveys can be very high. Therefore it is important to ensure the survey is efficient, in terms of resource requirements, and is robust to any changes in monitoring objectives over time. There are many designs currently being developed which include features such as spatial balance, unequal probability, adaptive sampling and unequal repeat sampling intervals. In this session we will hear from researchers who are actively involved in planning long term statistical surveys for ecological monitoring.