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14 spot ladybird

14 spot ladybird - Amy Lewis

Monitoring and Research

Local Record Centres

Local Environmental Record Centres (LRCs) can be found in each county in England and are usually supported by partners like Natural England, the Environment Agency, Local Authorities and Wildlife Trusts.

There are three Local Record Centres hosted by the Wildlife Trust BCN, which together cover the Local Authority areas of Bedfordshire and Luton, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, and Northamptonshire. These three LRCs form part of a wider network of LRCs nationwide, all responsible for collating, managing and sharing information about animal and plant species, habitats and other landscape features such as geological or protected sites. The LRCs are the first port of call for ecological information and a valued resource for the local community working with local authorities, environmental consultants, conservation organisations, educational institutions and the general public.

The LRCs are separate organisations, often working to support the work of the Wildlife Trust, typically working in the background as important resources for managing data or providing data for projects

What does your Local Record Centre do?

  • Acts as a custodian of ecological and geological data for the county, holding hundreds of thousands of digitised species records.
  • Engages with the local recording community – volunteers and amateur naturalists – to support and guide local biological recording effort, ensuring species and habitat records are managed and undergo quality control.
  • Disseminates information about the distribution of legally protected, rare or threatened species, habitats and geodiversity sites to organisations in the public and private sector whose actions affect the environment. This includes: planning policy and development control, land and waste management, control of invasive species, highway maintenance and Local Wildlife Sites monitoring and reporting.
  • Provides a range of products and services to meet the requirements of data users e.g. data searches, habitat mapping, green infrastructure projects, planning list searches etc
  • Supports and trains volunteers, attends public events and promotes the recording of wildlife in the community
  • Provides data to the National Biodiversity Network, a national database of wildlife information across the UK
  • Supports the network of county recorders and other groups and individuals who help record habitat and species information.

To find out more, contact your Local Record Centre.

  • Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Environmental Records Centre (CPERC) www.cperc.org.uk