The original collaboration between NBN Trust and ALERC to provide the National Coordinator post finishes with the Defra – NBN contract at the end of March. However, NBNT and ALERC are able to continue to contribute to the post for at least another six months, securing it until the 31st September 2014. The cost of the post will be covered 50% by NBN Trust and 50% by ALERC.
The work for this period will be in a similar vein to the work over the previous two years, with a view to building capacity within the LERC movement as well as improving access to higher quality data and increasing data use. Within these broad themes, the specific work will include liaising with LERCs and national schemes and societies in order to secure mutual data exchange, as well helping LERCs to get the most out of NBN Gateway 5. LERCs are making and receiving a lot of data access requests currently and there are lessons to be learned from this that can be passed around the LERC community to ensure that data is shared via the NBN Gateway effectively and efficiently.
An area of work that is particularly important at present is the development of multi taxa species surveillance, the Natural England led policy that aims to provide a robust sampling methodology for data collected by volunteers, thus ensuring that firm conclusions can be drawn on species distribution trends. ALERC and NE are already working in close association to help develop LERCs work towards this new policy, and will continue to do so over the next six months, particularly by sharing knowledge and resources. This work will continue between April and September as NE and ALERC work towards the production of a memorandum of agreement for 2014-15 that will help build a rigorous sample of sites to be surveyed now and into the future.
One of the most important aspects of the ANC role is to provide the capacity for ALERC to interact with others in the biodiversity data community, not just the country agencies, but also the private and voluntary sectors. This will carry on as the NBNT, ALERC and CIEEM continue to combine on projects such as the consultants’ data portal – helping ecological consultants share their data with the wider NBN partnership. We will bring more news on this in due course.
From an internal ALERC point of view, the continuation of the ANC role means that the administration of the accreditation system can carry on, and will allow those LERCs already booked in to have their assessments. As well as this, there are the preparations for the 2014 ALERC conference to be completed and answering the enquiries from LERCs and their partners is a daily task.
