These awards have been developed by the National Biodiversity Network, the National Forum for Biological Recording and the Biological Records Centre.

Following the success of last year’s awards, when we received 53 nominations overall, we are excited by the prospect of even more nominations for amazing people in 2016!

Award categories

We have made one change to the awards, by adding in a separate group award, so there are now five categories:

• Gilbert White youth award for terrestrial and freshwater wildlife
• Gilbert White adult award for terrestrial and freshwater wildlife
• David Robertson youth award for marine and coastal wildlife
• David Robertson adult award for marine and coastal wildlife
• Lynne Farrell group award for wildlife recording

Nominations

If you, or your organisation, know of any individuals or any groups of people that have made an outstanding contribution, make sure you nominate them for the relevant award.

The awards committee will consider the significance of the contribution (voluntary or otherwise) made to biological recording and/or improving our understanding of the UK’s biodiversity. This could include filling geographic or taxonomic gaps in our knowledge, encouraging and facilitating participation, verifying records, teaching or mentoring recorders, or creating and sharing tools and resources to support biological recording and increasing participation.

Please include as much relevant information as possible, on how your nominee is making a difference and the impact of their involvement in biological recording, to a maximum of 500 words.

You can nominate one person for different categories using the same form. If you wish to nominate more than one person or group please use a separate form for each nominee. Unfortunately, you can’t nominate yourself!

Please send your completed nomination form to:  support@nbn.org.uk

Download the NBN Awards nomination form 2016 (editable PDF)

Download more information on the NBN Awards for biological recording 2016

Important dates

Nominations opened on 20^th April and close on 31^st July 2016.

Successful nominees will be notified by the end of October and invited to attend the awards ceremony.

Awards presentation

The awards will be presented at a special ceremony on the evening of 17 November 2016 as part of the two-day NBN Conference in Edinburgh on 17 – 18 November 2016.

We are delighted that these awards will once again be sponsored by Swarovski Optik UK.

Rules of the Awards

• The National Biodiversity Network Trust will make the awards annually.
• Nominations may be made by anyone (including people and organisations that are not Network members), but you may not nominate yourself.
• Individuals, groups of people or entire organisations are eligible for the awards.
• The Awards committee will decide on the winners each year. The Committee will include the Chair of the NBN Board of Trustees, the NBN Patron (Earl of Selborne), a representative of any sponsoring organisation, the CEO of the NBN and representatives of the Biological Records Centre and National Forum for Biological Recording.
• Nominations open on 20^th April and close on 31^st July 2016.
• Successful nominees will be notified by the end of October and invited to attend the awards ceremony.

John Sawyer NBN Open Data Award

As in 2015, the NBN will once again be determining the winner of the above award, which has been created to “recognise and celebrate the outstanding contribution of NBN Data Partners in achieving the vision of the NBN in collecting and sharing biological data openly to educate and inform”.

Using the criteria below, the NBN Secretariat will identify one Data Partner deserving of the Open Data Award in 2016.

Criteria for the John Sawyer NBN Open Data Award:

• NBN membership – Organisation must be a member of the NBN
• Currency – The mean age of the data
• Visibility – Organisations that make more than 90% of their records visible
• Resolution – Organisations that make their records available at 100 m resolution or better
• Data licences – the percentage of datasets assigned with a creative commons licence on the NBN Gateway

The winner of the Award will be notified by the end of October and invited to attend the awards ceremony in November.

N.B. Nominations cannot be made for the John Sawyer NBN Open Data Award.

2015 Awards

Information on all of last year’s winners can be found in our previous news article.

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