St Helens Wildlife Recording Group

NBN Gateway

This is a very exciting web based tool for conservationists and anybody with an interest in wildlife, throughout the UK. If you have access to the internet, we encourage to take a look at this web site. At present there are some large gaps in the data, but these are being rapidly filled.

The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) is a central database for wildlife records from all over the UK. The NBN Gateway is the web based interface which allows you to view and download this data through a variety of interactive tools, including interactive distribution maps. Data is submitted to the NBN by various wildlife organisations (Data providers) from all around the UK.

All data submitted by local observers to the St Helens Wildlife Recording Group is held in the St Helens Wildlife Dataset, and viewable through the NBN Gateway. At the time of writing, this is in the region of 100, 000 records of Birds, Moths, Butterflies, Dragonflies, Mammals and other wildlife seen in St Helens, dating back as far as 1835. This dataset will be updated every 3 – 6 months.

Each Data Provider has their own dataset, which is their part of the central database, i.e. the data that belongs to them. By splitting the data in this way, Data Providers can manage their own data by setting access limitations (for example in the case of sensitive data such as rare breeding birds).

There are two important reasons why the St Helens Wildlife Recording Group should submit data to the NBN, as follows:

One of the aims of our group is to raise awareness of wildlife in the borough of St Helens. By making our data available through the NBN Gateway, it allows local observers to view and download all of our data through various interactive tools. You can see how your records fit into the local picture. It will also help you work out which are the best places locally to see certain species. For example, if you would like to see a Merlin locally, where should you look, and when? By viewing our data on a NBN Gateway interactive map, you can very quickly identify the most likely locations and best time of year. It doesn’t guarantee you a Merlin, but it helps.

Our records help complete the national picture. For example, Corn Buntings have declined all over the UK, but in which places are they still found nationally? Which places need protection to help the survival of the species? By viewing a map of the UK, a conservationist could see that there are still good populations in St Helens, but that they are showing signs of declining even here. Therefore the farmland around St Helens could be targeted for special protection in an effort to stabilise the population. In this way our records can help conservation and help preserve habitat and save species.

By contributing to the NBN Gateway, the St Helens Wildlife Recording Group is at the forefront of wildlife recording. It’s only a matter of time before other wildlife groups follow our lead.

However, some observers may have concerns about certain records being made publicly available on the internet. This maybe because they fear that the species in question will attract too much attention and may be disturbed, or it may be because it is on private land where the owner will not allow public access. If you do have any such concerns, please let us know. We are able to flag your data as “sensitive” or “Not to be downloaded to NBN”. Data flagged as sensitive can only be seen by people who are granted permission by the dataset administrator (Colin Davies).

There are different ways in which you can view the data. To get you started, take a look at the following links. When you are looking at the interactive maps, remember, if you want to zoom in, draw a box around the area you are interested in by holding the mouse key down. The following are interactive maps:

The following gives you a clickable list of all the bird species seen in 10km square SJ59. Click on a species and you will see all the squares in which the species has been recorded.

SJ59

If you look below the map, you will see a reference to the St Helens Wildlife Dataset. You will notice that both "Sensitive Access" and "Download Raw Data" are denied. This is because you are not logged in. Only registered users are allowed access to this data. To gain access to this data, set yourself up as a user of the gateway and send us an email with your user id. This is to stop unauthorised users downloading data and seeing sensitive data. Once you have "Download Raw Data" access, you can see all of our records, including dates and observer names.

Remember, this all depends on people submitting records, so if a species is absent from a square in which you know that it has been recorded, you can put it right. Let us know, and the next time the dataset is updated, it will appear. For advice on submitting records, click here.

NBN Gateway