Biological Records Centre Report 1999–2004 2005

Abstract

The Biological Records Centre (BRC) is funded jointly by JNCC and NERC through a partnership based on a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA). The partnership started in 1973 when the Nature Conservancy was divided to form the successor bodies Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) and Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE). NCC was in turn divided further to form JNCC and three country agencies, while ITE was merged with other NERC units to form CEH. Through all these changes, the partnership has been maintained. This report covers the period of the 6-year MoA for 1999–2004. At the time of writing, a new agreement for 2005-2010 is in place.

The work of the Biological Records Centre (BRC) takes place as a partnership between JNCC and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH). The main purposes of BRC are to document species distributions and to interpret changes at the geographical scale in the United Kingdom. The work of BRC is possible, not only because of longstanding support from the funding partners, but also because of the commitment of volunteers, recording schemes, government departments, local records centres, academic researchers, and non-government conservation organisations to the large-scale documentation of biodiversity

The period 1999–2004 was marked by rapid progress in information technology, with concomitant institutional developments. These have been highly beneficial for BRC, whose data are increasingly used, not only by the UK country nature conservation bodies, but also by NGOs, research workers, policy makers and volunteers. The outstanding achievement of the reporting period, underpinning most other developments, was the setting up of the National Biodiversity Network (NBN). This has transformed the way in which BRC works, not only by providing access to data through the NBN Gateway, but by bringing together providers and users of data in a way that was not hitherto possible.