Northamptonshire Biodiversity Records Centre NBRC team. Funded by the Environment Agency, the NBRC Newsletter 15 project aims to strengthen ecologically informed river restoration project development within Spring/Summer 2018 Northamptonshire, with the aid of new technologies for monitoring and evaluation within the Nene Valley. Our state-of-the-art Phantom 4 Pro drone is capable As we move from winter to spring we have once again of producing detailed aerial imagery and video, been busily gathering, processing, validating and, with allowing us a bird’s eye view of the county. This the aid of Northamptonshire’s fantastic county means that we can get detailed imagery of previously recorders, verifying all of the records submitted to us inaccessible areas – including in 3D! Nathalie and throughout 2017. A massive annual effort to ensure Rachel are training as qualified operators to meet civil our database remains up-to date with over 130,000 aviation authority standards. new records added in the last year alone! We are now ready and up to date with new species layers and new Lastly, our annual county recorders Bioblitz is only citations from the latest local wildlife survey. weeks away! We intend to survey two local wildlife sites near Corby over a period of 24-hours. Watch our As well as keeping our database current, our twitter and WILDside facebook group for live updates digitisation project ran by Rachel and our team of of the species we find on the day. wonderful volunteers ensures historical species records are retained and transferred from paper to digital records for future use. This information is Staffing invaluable to ensure we are able to track local trends Due to the success of the first year of our WILDside and as an archive for biological research. We are not project, Heritage Lottery Fund has approved a alone in this, research by Henry McGhie, Head of contract extension for our fantastic Project Collections & Curator of Zoology, Manchester Coordinator, Ryan Clark. This means he will be with us Museum, University of Manchester aims to and leading throughout the project period, helping investigate how best to support the ongoing the NBRC grow recording reach and support for usefulness of natural sciences collections held in identification across the county. museums across the UK as a research infrastructure. You can still take part in this research and have your In December, we welcomed a new Centre Manager to say. the Northamptonshire Biological Record Centre team, Rosalind Johnston. The team saw a steady demand for biological information and species mapping throughout the last Introductions year – producing over 200 reports! Each report The time has seemed to means up to date current biological information being have whizzed by, I have used in the decision making that shapes the now been with the team landscapes and species we see in Northamptonshire. for nearly half a year. I am Our Heritage Lottery Fund WILDside project has gone new to the record centre from strength to strength – inspiring new audiences world, joining from years to take up biological recording, equipping our Lings of project management office with reference materials and equipment and fundraising roles for a needed and supporting species identification skills. number of conservation Ryan has planned a fantastic summer of bioblitz and international events, training workshops, and talks to get us all out development NGOs surveying. Your response to our seasonal surveys has including ZSL, Care for the Wild (now Born Free) and been fantastic! Mission Rabies. I hold an MSc in Primatology, giving me useful skills for analysis (utilising SPSS and ArcGIS A new and exciting feature of our project work is the software), however, my interests are broader and I establishment of drone biological monitoring by the would describe myself as a generalist in biological terms. I am, however, fascinated by people’s engagement with the natural word and how to maximise the benefits of this for species and habitats – the basis of research I have completed. I am a trained teacher and have recently been developing my knowledge of Forest School through volunteering in my spare time. Having grown my love of wildlife watching many years ago at Arundel wetland centres, where I guided visitors to notice, understand and enjoy the ecology around them, it feels wonderful to once again be able to contribute to the species and habitats in my native land by delivering a vital ecologically informed There were two days jammed packed with talks and underpinning for planning and decision-making workshops discussing various national and local through our database. projects, which are developing biological recording The team and our wider recording network have been skills in Britain. His favourite talk came from Ian fantastically supportive in helping me getting to grips Wallace, National Caddisfly recorder. Ian gave a with the procedures at the centre, a process we are personal account of how he learnt species documenting formally alongside the work itself so identification and has now progressed into a national that we can work towards submission for ALERC expert. He spoke about how technology and recording accreditation within the year. The fantastic WILDside has changed during this time. This event brought and Bigger Vision projects are a tremendously exciting together people with such a varied background and step, from which we aim to strengthen our surveying this made the discussions thought provoking and informative. for years to come – enhancing the information held in our database and our capabilities for biological Everyone agreed that we need to work together more monitoring. to try and fill the gaps in species identification and As a team, we are growing in our skills to meet these recording, whilst also working individually to pass on aims, but this cannot be achieved alone. Your record our own skills wherever possible. Social media was submissions, your feedback from events, workshops also highlighted as playing a huge part in modern and talks, your voluntary help to strengthen our data biological recording. We certainly do agree, so please and ideas for services we can work towards are what do follow us on Twitter @_Northants_BRC to keep up keeps the centre growing. to date with records centre news. Rosalind Johnston, NBRC Manager Ryan Clark, WILDside Project Coordinator NBN Atlas As of the 31 March 2017 the NBN gateway was National Forum for Biological replaced by Atlas. As a member of the NBN and Recording Conference 2018 partner we are of the current 129 data partners sharing our records with the agreement of county Our WILDside Project Coordinator, Ryan Clark recorders to 2km resolution for the benefit of public attended the National Forum for Biological Recording research. We have recently updated our data sharing Conference in May. This year the event took place in agreement to reflect this. To support data partners, Shrewsbury and the theme was ‘Skill Development for who like us are often LERCs who rely on revenue from Biological Recording’. Ryan spoke at the conference commercial provision of biodiversity information about our Heritage Lottery Fund supported WILDside services to support collection and processing of Project and the lessons learnt from the project so far. biological data, NBN Trust have updated the terms of Juliette Butler, the Wildlife Trust’s Training Workshop use recently so that data users may now be liable to Officer, spoke alongside Ryan about the training pay a penalty charge if they breach an NBN data courses the Wildlife Trust runs, both these set of partner’s licence conditions. Additionally, the newly workshops complement one another. enhanced verification process for occurrence records 2 will be translated into the display shown on validation process. This falls under ‘legitimate occurrence maps – making the difference between interest’ and outside the purpose of adding to ‘accepted’ and ‘unconfirmed’ records clearer. biological information in the county, your details would never be shared with a third party. We store all of our records securely. Rosalind Johnston, NBRC Manager ALERC You can read up on GDPR and how this affects you here and view our updated Privacy Policy on our The year started with a new ALERC Chair, Clare website http://www.northantsbrc.org.uk/ from mid- Blencowe of Sussex BRC and Steve Whitbread in his June. new post as ALERC Director putting out a call to all LERCs and key stakeholders to share their views of the Rosalind Johnston, NBRC Manager next steps for Recorder 6. Over 100 responses formed Database the resulting report, which will form the basis of Alongside ensuring that our county records are kept planning for a software successor. This is expected to up to date annually, over the last few years the NBRC be a key issue discussed in October’s conference. has continued to increase and improve it’s holding of The new DEFRA 25-year environmental plan relies on full county datasets. the provision and use of ecological data. ALERC have It is hoped later this year to gain a full county lichen responded here with a call to support the source of dataset from the British Lichen Society. We will also this information – the recording network. be continuing to work with county recorders in Other changes include discussion of the current data getting full county datasets for other groups not yet supply to the Environment Agency. The existing MoA added into our database. We are always open to expires in 2019 and discussions are ongoing between discussion to form new agreements and support recorders to make this possible. ALERC Directors and the Environment Agency in shaping a new contract. A total of fifty-four datasets were received last year, forty-four of which have been fully processed and added to the recorder database.