For someone who records across the UK of many differing flora and fauna, it always amazes me that some of my records have been stagnant for a very long time. Presuming many County Recorders don't use iRecord and I find it strange, for example, one CR of macro moths doesn't use it, but the micro moth CR does! What happens to these records if they aren't verified? Couldn't they be collated for example and sent to the local wildlife trust database?
Comments
Verification Assistants
Butterfly Conservation recognised a few years ago that there was a backlog of unverified iRecord records in some Vice Counties & trained a group of people, including me, as Verification Assistants to assist some County Recorders in clearing unverified records.
If there is an issue, I wonder if there is a need for the same approach for moth records in some areas?
Yes I note a lot of records…
Yes I note a lot of records stagnating notably in areas where Garden Botany has jumped the Boundary and where systematic surveys of for example an area wishes to record all Biodiversity . these are simply languishing overtime and could potentially be important as early warning to invasives or other data metrics . No reflection on CR's etc the issue I believe is lack of familiarty with the plant
Response
Dear Colin, Just to note that such records will still be shared with Local Environmental Record Centres. For garden plants, I agree with your sentiment. We have a specific form that allows for the recording of plant statuses (https://irecord.org.uk/enter-vascular-plants) and we are working towards extending these attributes to the iRecord app and the more general website forms. This will allow more informative sharing of these data with the BSBI, and better verification. Often the main reason that local plant VCRs do not verify garden taxa is not that they are unfamiliar with them, but because they would like to specifically flag them as planted or suchlike, allowing them to be separated out or incorporated from summaries as required. The addition of status information will allow this soon. Best wishes,
Hello,
In general this depends on engagement from national taxon-focused schemes or societies. For moths, for example, an email to Butterfly Conservation might both reveal, and nudge, perceived deficiencies in verification activity. In general however, even where records are unverified they are still made available to the relevant local environmental records centres, and they may be passed on the NBN Atlas.
Best wishes, Oli (UKCEH)