Linking record collection with professional conservation

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LINKING RECORD COLLECTION WITH PROFESSIONAL CONSERVATION KEITH PORTER

Introduction To draw a parallel with what David Bellamy has said; there is another 'picket line' that is not Standing in front of a tractor, but Standing in front of a government minister. I would count myself in the latter 'picket line', so I hope you will appreciate the difference of views. The main purpose of my presentation is to show how we can maximise the benefit of what is essentially a voluntary interest for the good of future generations. I saw places as a child that I would like my children to see, but I want to know if I am too late? Have these places gone? I would expect this to be the driving and motivating force behind all naturalists and conservationists today as it is for me. I want to explain what the links are between the local recording being done by naturalists in Suffolk and the 'Biodiversity Action Plan' for instance, or the 'Habitats and Species Directive' Coming out of Europe. If you understand the links and can see that there are connections, it may further motivate and inspire you to record this very important heritage.

Children As Naturalists My childhood was in West Cumbria where things were not as bad as those described by David Bellamy. There were lots of nice places and the rates of progress were extremely slow - everybody went underground and forgot about what was above. I was interested in natural history as a child and when I was aged three or four, my grandfather introduced me to a Garden Tiger Moth. I became interested in many aspects of natural history and tried putting names to the things I discovered. This variety and hunger for knowledge is a common, driving theme. Incidentally, and following on from what David has said, I would like to stress that it is absolutelv critical that there is a next generation of naturalists. I am very saddened to learn that things like taxonomy are dropping out of the education system. These are the issues we need to tackle, certainly as we approach the next millennium because that's the driving and motivating force of the next generations.

As a schoolboy I used to record plants for the tetrad efforts of the plant atlas in the 1970's. Many of the dots on maps you see, particularly those for butterflies and moths in Cumbria and the northern parts of England, are the result of my recording actions at that time. Having your efforts clearly recognised is another motivating force for all recording. Later on, from school and university, I ended up helping to evaluate, select and notify these wonderful Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs) at the peak of the process. At that time we were regularly notifying one or two every week. The habitat information that we based our evaluation and selection of these sites was largely collected by ourselves with help from the Naturalists' Societies and Wildlife Trusts, but records for species were certainly derived from the recording fraternity. We did not have either the time or, in some cases, the expertise to collect that information ourselves. I started out as an amateur recorder and ended up as a

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professional user of the data that those people were collecting. It is the links between the two roles that I understand that I would like to amplify. In addition, I would like to provide some insight into the way that English Nature is thinking about this area although this should not be interpreted as policy. We are here to make sure that you can return to the places you value in ten years time and see he same things. That is the fundamental role of ourselves as a statutory agency.

Needs of Users As a conservation agency we have a number of needs which can be summarised simply:1. Priorities The first need for information is essentially to identify the priorities. We are all 'strapped for cash.' We are all pushed to do more with less. We have to focus on priorities be they local, national or international. Identification of priorities will depend upon the availability of relevant information.

2. Obiectives How many do we need? Do we need to restore 20%, 5%, or 300% more of the population, or bring something back from the edge of extinction? Recording efforts fuel these kinds of needs.

3. Location Having decided what we then broadly want to do with them, we need to know where best to do it. At which sites and in what parts of the country?

4. Status We then need to know what the State of nature is locally and nationally. Is it getting better or worse? Are we actually Coming out of the bottom of the 'trough' of decline? This is a very important role which we are continuing to develop and we will certainly need your help and advice with.

5. Focus In a wider sense we do need to know that people are still recording the common daisy, but we as agencies will focus on particular species.

These may be spaces for which we have legislative responsibility, or for which Europe presses certain needs upon us, but there are species defined for which we need particular information. There are also those species which legislation demands we need to have regard to, often for political reasons rather than for conservation reasons.

6. Character Within certain contexts and frameworks we do need to encapsulate something called 'character." The essence of many parts of the country. In the Chilterns it is Beech woods and Bluebells. Bluebells are not uncommon in England and they would never qualify for an entry in a red-data book, but in a European sense they are virtually unique. We have Professors Coming from Holland and Denmark revelling in what we consider to be a normal, relatively common resource.

7. Habitat Recorders tend to be very much focused upon species. It is very difficult from my point of view to identify how you conserve species. You cannot. You can only conserve and manage the places in which those species live. Therefore, information on the quality, extent, rates of change, trends in habitats are critical to the work of the statutory bodies.

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- Geology and Land Form We have a remit, interest and genuine need to understand what the resource of geology and land form is. Not just for the

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next generation of oil scientists, but for us to understand the relationship between the soils, areas of the country and those ecological processes. It was a Flora of Essex that gave me some of the first inklings when I was helping my Organisation to develop the natural areas concept. The authors actually used the soils maps, land form and geology to split the county up into some sort of 'floral zoning' based upon that geology and land form.

We must not forget the links between those things.

9. Monitoring In terms of monitoring I will just lay down a baseline:(a) We have a particular responsibility for SSSIs. The legislative base upon which we are founded specifically refers to them. We have many obligations to make sure that we do have the right ones, manage them in the right way, secure their management in the right form and measure that we have been successful. The focus on SSSIs is possibly largely our responsibility, but we need your help with recording and species. (b) Within the remaining countryside and there is a whole ränge of other sites. Every county is being encouraged to recognise their sites of nature conservation interest, or whatever form of acronym they are assigned. That is the resource that we call the 'semi-natural'. Those are the areas that you will have predominant influence upon, particularly through specialist groups, local record centres and recording.

The broader perspective is that these are the sort of places that the Department of the Environment (DOE) is particularly interested in from a policy point of view. (c) The wider, 1km view of the countryside that has been developed by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE). It is the land Classification, the land cover, where you are able to take a more pragmatic, sampling approach to what is going on in the countryside. That is where statements like 'We are losing our hedgerows/flower rieh meadows etc.' come from.

Taking all three of those areas together you need to think about where your inputs lie. Which areas are you most interested in contributing to? Where is the greatest value going to come from.

Forging Links Having described the needs of the users, I would argue that all of you enjoy going out looking at the wildlife. If you didn't enjoy it, you would not do it. By filling in that record card, provided it's completed in certain ways, and if you understand the context of collecting that data, we can add an enormous amount of value to each individual record. We can try our best to make sure that you do not lose the next site to the hypermarket because you actually teil us about the species there. To draw another parallel with David's remarks; not releasing information fullv is the worse thing vou can possibly do. In other parts of the country some record centres now refuse to take in information that recorders do not allow to be widely released because, in conservation terms, it is lost information. Such records may be of historical value, but we are living in a world where we are trying to restore something and not document its decline.

Let us look together at how we can fulfil these needs. Who actually generates

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these data? Who are the key 'players' in this process? In October 1995 there was a very influential document published. It is called 'The Biological Recording in the United Kingdom' and it was published in three volumes by the DOE and it was assembled, after a lengthy gestation period, from a sample by group called the Co-ordinating Commission for Biological Recording. The project was set up in response to initiatives that had been taken earlier in the '60s and '70s by the Linnean Society. It was a definitive description of the State of biological recording in the early '90s. Unfortunately, the impact of that particular document was overshadowed by the political appeal of another called the 'Biodiversity Action Plan'. Fortunately, many of the key findings of the former study were incorporated into the latter publication. Some of the facts that emerged from 'The Biological Recording in the United Kingdom' are of considerable interest in themselves. Included is that there are more than two thousand agencies and societies in the United Kingdom which claim to collect, hold and stรถre biological records. To try and gain some consensus and coordination that variety of recording effort is quite a challenge which is why we have not particularly succeeded today. An important fact I want you to take away from this study is that over 70% of all species records collected are collected by volunteers. Agencies contribute barely 3% of those records. This statistic highlights the importance of the recording fraternity. Your activities in your spare time are fuelling the whole foundation of our knowledge of species and related issues. It is a fascinating fact, but it is also the nub of the challenge facing us today. How can we co-ordinate this mass of locally focused recorders to ensure that the data we have are accurate, up to date and useable in the levels and forms that the users require it?

The issues can be illustrated in a structured way:(1) Oualitv of Data How reliable are the records? From my colleagues at the Biological Records Centre (BRC) a lot of the effort in assessing submitted records are checking for these kinds of errors. It is no good having a wonderful data set if a user thinks, or suspects, that a significant part of it may be misidentified or allocated to the wrong Square (location errors are not just a problem with the work of amateurs. A recent exercise to map plots of National Nature Reserves from a Computer database at English Nature showed some sites appearing in Scotland, some in Ireland and others in the middle of the sea!). Problems concerning species errors do not present such a problem as it is possible for users to build in appropriate risk analysis.

(2) Coverage of Data. I welcome the proliferation of atlases that have been published and English Nature is in the process of bringing that data into an accessible format. Atlases are very good at showing where people have been. They do not necessarily show where a species was sought but not found which is an important piece of information that we are interested in. A certain Diptera recorder is reputed to have written his initial across central England in Dung Fly records because nobody eise was interested. Coverage is a factor that we need to consider and address.

(3) Topicality of Data A recent survey of the Dormouse commissioned by English Nature revealed that a marked paucity of records had actually

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reached the national Biological Records Centre. They are kept in local record centres or perhaps in shoe boxes under beds.

(4) Standards of Data How do you define a site? Everyone who went to the same site would draw different lines. Standards are needed to know when we are talking about the same place. We need to decide how individuals record that information. Do we record it at 10km. squares Scale or six figure grid references? What do we do about names? Species keep changing their specific names. How do we know we are talking about the same things.

(5) Access to Data There are lots of current overviews and people collecting information, but unfortunately, as I have already described, not all of it is getting through to the people who can use it and certainly not within the time-scales that are necessary.

(6) Costs Lastly, I am duty-bound to consider costs. It is no good having wonderful systems and not being able to afford to do anything with them.

The sort of approaches that we are currently using recognise that birds are very well covered under the excellent frameworks of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) which cover the whole ränge of requirements for collecting bird information. The vast amount of records in the wider domain are bird records. Plants are fairly well covered with the Botanical Society of Great Britain and Ireland (BSBI) taking the lead in partnership with the Biological Records Centre (BRC) and the Department of the Environment (DOE) who are helping with atlases. Invertebrates are quite a different 'kettle of fish'. The Biological Records Centre (BRC) have done some excellent work, and continue to do so with specific groups. They have collated, stimulated and provided feedback etc. There are now spin-off groups for a number of invertebrate specialities relating to the BRC acting as satellites. There are also local records centres, societies and other focus groups that contribute to how we see the recording fraternity.

Current Activity of Users I have emphasised several times that when you look at a particular piece of data you need to consider a number of questions. Where eise does it exist? What is its context? Should it be a priority on this site, or in this part of the country? To obtain information to answer these questions is extremely difficult. Data available nationally for some species may be 20 years old, yet it is known that current records exist in local records centres to which access cannot be gained.

A wider context is required for individual records and individual sites to allow us to take some sensible decisions.

There is a resistance to recording in the finer Square sizes because individual records may look thinly distributed. Traditionally, the emphasis has been upon 'county' and 10km Square recording. Future recording must be geared to the s m a l l e r scales in order to realise the potential of modern C o m p u t e r technology.

It is possible to produce large scale, national maps from 1km. records, but not 1 km. site maps from 10km. records. To illustrate how deceptive large scale mapping can be, I give as a hypothetical illustration a certain area of the Chilterns. In the past 10 years Pasque Flower has been found in two neighbouring 10 km squares illustrated by two large blocks with a Standard atlas

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approach. A closer examination indicates a grouping of three 1 km squares supporting the species. The reality of life is that those three 1 km. squares are actually founded upon one site holding thirteen plants. The site occurs across the corners of the three squares. Depending upon the level with which that particular piece of Information is viewed, a number of very different conclusions can be drawn. In terms of Standards we all need to eventually get down to knowing where things are, how many there are, whether they are they a priority and where to target them.

Natural Area Maps The Department of the Environment (DOE) view of land Classification based upon satellite land cover is fine from a Strategie viewpoint. English Nature use it and are fully behind supporting it with the translation of the systems. We feel, however, that nature conservation and nature are about people who want to know what is in their local patch and what the character is. They want to be able to relate to what we are talking about. Our alternative idea, which uses more of a soft science approach, was first met with controversy. It is concerned with identifying land forms, soils, natural history of the land with the ecological character of an area. The maps produced are called 'Natural Areas' and they divide the country into 92 terrestrial areas. Each of the areas have a specific character that is different to the neighbouring area. The Chilterns, for instance, have a completely different character to the Oxford Clay Vale below them.

There are different species, habitats, plant communities and issues affecting nature conservation. The way that the maps can be used is to allow targeting and prioritisation, but it has to be driven by the kind of information that naturalists would collect.

To illustrate a use of 'Natural Areas' maps consider the distribution of Dormice shown by a recent survey of hazelnut shells. The density of colour refers to the density of finds of Dormice in a particular part of the country.

Using this framework we can identify what sort of areas of the country are best for Dormice, where they are existing 'on the edge' where we may need to consider extension of ränge or climatic change and where they are absent, apparently absent or existing in very poor numbers. Use can be made of the framework in a number of other ways like looking at natural areas or geographical areas individually. For those interested in the Norfolk Broads it can be described as 'lowland peatland.' This natural area exists in only six areas which between them encapsulate the vast majority of the lowland resource of its type in England. Individual areas can then be considered with their associated record data as part of the whole lowland peat resource and a view drawn.

Details of the approach to conservation using the Natural Areas Map will be published in the next six months to show how it can help recording and prioritisation.

Summary Where does future co-ordination lie? Where does everyone fit in? A consequence of the 'Biodiversity Action Plan' has been that, through the development of a bid to the Millennium Commission, agencies and representatives of all the organisations collecting biological records have got together and

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talked about forming a national data network. The idea is to stimulate local focuses for data maintenance, holding and provision to others and have some way of collating that Information - not just by letter but actually 'on line' with some national summary point. Whatever level we want to look at information we can do so with ease. What is more important, we can do so not long after the information has been put into the system and not have to wait 20 years for the publication of the next atlas.

The approach that we are looking towards now is to secure adequate coverage of the United Kingdom by a different type of records centre, perhaps.

We want the local records centres to be the sort that will hold and manage data on species and features. English Nature is Willing to break down some of our national inventories for instance and provide them to those local centres and enter into agreements to make sure that we can have them maintained to a common Standard and recover information when we need it. We need those centres to provide an objective Service to all. This may mean that consultancy is not the kind of thing that you do from one of these centres because it will prejudice those contributing data who suspect that the fruits of their voluntary labours could then be sold on or interpreted to a Consultant to build a hypermarket. We need to look at these issues. We need to link those records centres to relevant national points which is part of the thinking behind the Millennium bid. Regardless of any support from the Millennium Commission, the 'ball' has started 'rolling' on the local network initiative. We are far more committed to this idea which will allow all of us to have a focus for local recording. It is the way that I think we all have to go.

The recording you do as volunteers is the foundation of our current knowledge and we want to make that continue. Statutory agencies and other conservation bodies can put your data to work in restoring, and, perhaps, sometimes just maintaining the fabric of the countryside. More significantly, it is all about making sure that your children can see that you have appreciated the importance to future generations of the recording work that you have done in your own life time.

Keith Porter, English Nature, Northminster House, Peterborough PE11UA

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