Why and How

Collecting biological records is essential to enable us to understand the biodiversity of Staffordshire.

Much of these records are collected by organised surveys, however, a significant proportion are supplied by the general public. Isolated records may not seem very useful, but when they are all brought together in the Local Records Centre (LRC), they build up a detailed picture of the county.

The essentials for biological records:

What - the name of the species
Where - the location, preferably including the grid reference
Who - the recorder and determiner, if these are defferent
When - the date of the sighting

This information is then used to inform the BAP process and via the LRC interactive distribution maps are available Staffordshire Ecological Record, Online Atlases.

If you wish to send in any records to the LRC please visit the Staffordshire Ecological Record, Sightings page, where details of the information needed are included together with either an online recording form or a downloadable Excel spreadsheet complete with instructions on how to complete the spreadsheet.

Please note: the above links to download an Excel spreadsheet and associated instructions are external files. Right-click on the link and from the menu choose "Save Target As...", and save the files to a location on your own computer.

(Downloadable Excel spreadsheet = 3KB)
(Excel Instructions = 149KB)

These files are located at www.staffs-ecology.org.uk