ALERC Conference 2012 report

BVSC Conference Centre, Birmingham – 6th November 2012

Written by Mark Wills, North and East Yorkshire Ecological Data Centre and ALERC Director

The Association of Local Environmental Records Centres (ALERC) held its third annual conference at the start of November, attracting 90 delegates from LERCs from all across the UK.  We also welcomed speakers and delegates from Natural England, Defra and NBN.

The ALERC chair Gary Lewis, welcomed delegates to the conference and talked about the achievements of ALERC over the past year, with particular reference to the recruitment of the ALERC National Coordinator in January, achieved through funding secured from Defra via the NBN contract.

Mark Stevenson (Defra) and Andrew Thompson (NE) outlined the on-going Government support for biological recording.  The priority was to simplify the allocation of funding and to rationalise dataflow to ensure the maximum value is achieved from the data collected.  Andrew went on to talk about the Defra fund for biological recording in the voluntary sector, which aims to increase the quality and relevance of data collection and to assist LERCs in data uptake.

Andrew explained the five funding projects, which included elements such as supporting the development of biological recording skills by supporting ID courses for under-recorded groups through a contract with the Field Studies Council, supporting the development of online recording, validation & verification, and capital investment in data capture schemes.

Helen Roy from Biological Records Centre (BRC) then talked about engaging people in biological recording, with special reference to the Ladybird Recording Scheme.  The key to making these schemes work were making it easy to contribute to the recording scheme, developing people’s interest in the subject and effective communication and publicity using traditional and new media, face-to-face contact and publications such as atlases.  A key element in the success of the ladybird recording project was the development of effective partnerships between BRC and LERCs, public bodies (e.g. Natural England) and other interested organisations.  Helen also demonstrated the benefits of the online recording site iRecord for facilitating verification and improving data flow to LERCs and other users.

After the morning tea break, the Soapbox session returned for the second year.  This was the opportunity for anybody to stand up and have their say about any topic related to LERCs.  A lively conversation and debate ensued on subjects including the Fens Biodiversity Audit, Recorder 6 and a habitat & land use GIS attribution tool developed by the Southeast LERCs.

After a lively lunch break with plenty of networking opportunities there was a brief Q & A session with the ALERC National Coordinator Tom Hunt during which he was asked about a number of aspects of his work including the promotion of online recording amongst LERCs and the recently launched LERC accreditation scheme.  There was then a series of parallel workshops, details of which will be published on the ALERC website in due course.  The topics under discussion at the workshops were Social Media, LERC enquiry products, BARS, Smartphone technology, joint LERC agreements and The UK Species Inventory.

Delegate feedback regarding the conference was largely positive with some delegates commenting that the conference needs to be longer.  This comment was from a feedback form: “Definitely scope for a 2 day conference with the opportunity to attend more than one workshop session.  Perhaps 1st day speakers, 2nd day 2 workshops per delegate?”
 

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