NFBR Newsletter 41 NATIONAL FEDERATION FOR BIOLOGICAL RECORDING NEWSLETTER 41 December 2010 Are there new depths to marine recording in Dorset? NFBR Honorary Officers and Council Members following 2010 AGM Chair: Trevor James Richard Fox 56 Back Street, Ashwell, Baldock, Herts SG7 5PE Butterfly Conservation, Manor Yard, East Lulworth, Tel: 01462 742684 Dorset BH20 5QP Tel: 0870 7706158 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Vice-Chair: Steve Whitbread Damian McFerran (co-opted) CPRE London CEDaR, Ulster Museum, 70 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6EJ Botanic Gardens, Belfast BT9 5AB Tel: 020 7253 0248 Tel: 028 9038 3154 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]* Secretary: Darwyn Sumner Patrick Milne Home 122 Link Road, Anstey, Leicestershire BRISC representative (co-opted) LE7 7BX Tel. 0116 212 5075 Craigow, Milnathort, Kinross-shire KY13 0RP Email: [email protected] Tel: 01577 863 758 Membership Secretary & Treasurer: Claire Langrick John Newbould (co-opted) 47 Sunningdale Road, Hessle, East Yorks Stonecroft, 3 Brookmead Close, Sutton Poyntz, HU13 9AN Weymouth, DT3 6RS Tel: 01305 837384 Tel. 01482 648038 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Newsletter Editor: Carolyn Steele Lizzy Peat (Assistant Minutes Secretary) Dorset Environmental Records Centre, Hampshire Biodiversity Information Centre Library Headquarters, Colliton Park, Dorchester, 3rd Floor, Capital House, 48-52 Andover Road, Dorset DT1 1XJ. Tel: 01305 225081 Winchester SO23 7BH Tel: 01962 832327 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Website Manager: David Slade Simon Pickles South East Wales Biodiversity Records Centre, North & East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre, 13 St Andrews Crescent, Cardiff CF10 3DB 5 College Street, York YO1 7JF Tel: 029 2064 1110 Tel: 01904 557235 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] John Badmin Helen Roy Coppice Place, Perry Wood, Selling, near Biological Records Centre, CEH Wallingford, Faversham, Kent ME13 9RP Crowmarsh Gifford, Oxfordshire OX10 8BB Tel: 01227 752291 Tel: 01491 692252 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Paul Brown Mandy Rudd NatSCA representative (co-opted) Greenspace Information for Greater London The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, Skyline House, 200 Union Street, London, SE1 0LW London SW7 5BD Tel: 020 7803 4278 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Lucy Carter Craig Slawson UK Biodiversity, Department of Botany, Staffordshire Ecological Record, The Wolseley The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, Centre, Wolseley Bridge, Stafford, ST17 0WT London SW7 5BD Tel: 020 7942 5188 Tel: 01889 880100 E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] Paul Harding (co-opted) Simon Wood 60 Boxworth Road, Elsworth, Cambridge Worcestershire Biological Records Centre CB23 4JQ Lower Smite Farm, Smite Hill, Hindlip, Worcester Tel: 01954 267218 WR3 8SZ Tel: 01905 759759 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Martin Hicks Graham Walley Hertfordshire Biological Records Centre Historic & Natural Environment, Leicestershire County Hall, Pegs Lane, Hertford County Council, Room 500, County Hall, Glenfield Hertfordshire, SG13 8DN. Tel: 01992 555220 Leicester LE3 8TE Tel: 0116 265 7063 Email: [email protected] Email [email protected] * amended since the AGM NFBR Newsletter No. 41 November 2010 1 NATIONAL FEDERATION FOR BIOLOGICAL RECORDING Newsletter Contents Page no. Honorary Officers and Council Members 1 Note from the Editor 2 Thoughts on the Future of Biodiversity Information in the UK – Introducing 3 NFBR’s Strategic Plan 2011-15 Joined up whiting? Harmonizing marine data access in the UK 5 DORset Integrated Seabed study - visioning the seabed 8 An update from the Association of Local Environmental Records (ALERC) 10 Publications review The Flora of County Tyrone 11 British Scraptidae 12 Silent Summer: The State of Wildlife in Britain and Ireland 12 British and Irish Butterflies App 14 Notice of the 2011 NFBR AGM 14 Wildlife Recording at www.ispot.org.uk 15 Note from the Editor After a very full summer newsletter with articles on the conference presentations, this newsletter is somewhat slimmer. It has provided an opportunity to set out the background to the NFBR strategic plan and ask for comments from the membership. There will be more on this at the AGM and on the web-site. In addition we have two contributions on marine recording, an update on ALERC, an introduction to iSpot, book reviews and our first app review. I hope there will be something for everyone. Thank you to everyone who supplied articles for this issue. The next newsletter will be put together following our AGM and conference in April. Anyone interested in contributing to the newsletter, particularly along the theme of the conference, is very welcome to contact me directly. Carolyn Steele Front cover image: Dorset Coast (DORIS) The images of Lulworth Banks shown on page 9 , and the image on the front cover were produced using data from DORIS (DORset Integrated Seabed survey), a collaborative project involving Dorset Wildlife Trust, Maritime and Coastguard Agency, Channel Coastal Observatory and Royal Navy, with major funding from Viridor Credits Environmental Company. Other partners include Natural England, Dorset Strategic Partnership, University of Southampton and the National Oceanography Centre. NFBR Newsletter No. 41 November 2010 2 Thoughts on the Future of Biodiversity adequate weight is given to biodiversity Information in the UK – Introducing NFBR’s information need. Whereas official funding will be Strategic Plan 2011-15 targeted primarily at what are perceived as key targets: supporting the NBN network; BAP Steve Whitbread, NFBR Vice-chair priorities; continuation of long-term surveillance and monitoring etc., it must also support initiatives Biodiversity information - encompassing simple to that will maximise the benefits of voluntary complex biological records and other observations of networks and bring wider, lasting benefits, e.g. via the natural world and our impacts on it - has come a development of web-based tools that can be quickly long way in the last quarter century. Never has it held tailored to many different needs. such prominence in official mindsets, policies or procedures – although many would suggest that its Although its individual threads may be quite use has yet to become properly ingrained in every day simple, biological recording across the UK forms a decision-making, with real world influence and richly coloured, complicated and somewhat tangled outcomes rather variable thus far. But what of the tapestry. It encompasses a multitude of individuals future? and organisations, paid staff and volunteers, the public, private and third sectors, institutes, Projected climate and population change impacts and agencies, academia and all sorts of partnerships the increasingly urgent need for proportional, pre- between them; and an enormous swathe of emptive responses make it vital that the necessary biodiversity across the aquatic, marine and environmental and biodiversity information will be terrestrial environments. Sampling and recording available, utilised and acted upon. Unfortunately, this methods - formal and informal - are hugely varied. unparalleled need for evidence to guide strategic Various sequences of processes lead from a record policy and local decision-making towards being made in the field to its contributing to a sustainability coincides with major cuts in public report, an atlas or some decision. There is a sector finances. The cumulative and knock-on effects plethora of uses to which collected data may be put. over the next several years will pose serious obstacles and threats to the supply of high quality biodiversity The reasons for which records are made vary information and to the voluntary and professional hugely too. Personal interest, shared purpose, networks that sustain its flow. Although Coalition commercial need, professional requirement, Government statements have placed high importance research, education and legal obligation may all on the natural environment and a new White Paper is play a part. On top of this are the development of imminent, those services relating to the natural world individual recorders, the roles they play, and the - countryside, parks, local records centres, museums contributions they can make over time plus a et al. - from the local to national level, have been tradition stretching back over two centuries. consistently treated as soft targets of low priority Furthermore, the success of all this recording effort whenever budgets have been slashed in the past. In depends in turn on other activities: validation, the short to medium term there will definitely be less verification and management of datasets; the funding all round and, sadly, fewer posts directly or promotion and coordination of surveys; the indirectly involved with biodiversity information publication of findings; education, training and supply. It is essential to ensure that the inevitable mentoring; production of identification keys; access pruning circumvents irreparable harm whilst actively to well managed, museum collections and, translating these various pressures into drivers of a increasingly, website and newsgroup management future recording renaissance. This should also help to – as well as the resources to develop and maintain address a wide range of existing issues, some of them