New UK awards for biological recording
Written by John Sawyer, CEO, NBN Trust
j.sawyer@nbn.org.uk
Twitter: @_JohnSawyer
The National Biodiversity Network, in conjunction with the National Forum for Biological Recording and the Biological Records Centre, has established a new award scheme to celebrate outstanding achievement in biological recording and information sharing here in the UK.
The Gilbert White and David Robertson Awards will be presented at an event in York, on the evening of Thursday 19th November – a time for our Network to come together, to celebrate and socialise. These awards will offer an opportunity to spread the word about the remarkable success and achievements of our partners, inspire people to achieve even greater things and increase engagement about what our Network does.
With so many people working in our industry – recorders, verifiers, curators, educators, researchers and infrastructure experts – it will undoubtedly be hard to choose. But that should not deter us from using these awards to say thank you to the experts and amateurs alike, who work tirelessly to create an unprecedented knowledgebase about nature. Flicking through the pages of the NBN’s annual report it is clear we (the Network) are increasing our effectiveness at providing the evidence for environmental decision-making in the UK where more than 30,000 biological records are made every day. High tech data capture platforms are facilitating faster and more accurate recording and increasingly sophisticated campaigns are engaging more people in the survey, documentation and protection of our natural world.
The predominant narrative about our environment is largely negative, with threatened species on the brink and baselines shifting within generations. We want these new NBN awards, kindly sponsored this year by Swarovski Optik UK, to help counter that. We want to celebrate the tremendous work being done nationwide in documenting our natural world and learning about and understanding environmental and ecological change.
Nominations closed on 30th September, but we will bring you news on the winners soon.