London’s community of biological recorders are pivotal to the GiGL partnership. Volunteer recorders and recording societies are GiGL’s biggest source of new species records. To celebrate some of our city’s wonderful recorders we’re beginning a new regular feature to showcase their work.

GiGL’s Board of Directors are central to our work and our success. Their commitment and expertise helps guide GiGL and keeps us moving forward and developing. Directors are on the front line of biodiversity and open space work in the capital. They are GiGL service users and contribute to our data banks, as well as serving as ambassadors for GiGL.

The concepts behind ecosystem services, the multitude of ways in which humankind freely benefit from natural capital, have long been discussed. City planners need tools and guidance to develop strategies for urban development that value and protect natural capital, and some industry standards require businesses to demonstrate net gain outcomes.

In 2011, I wrote about my involvement with the ornithology records of the London Natural History Society, noting that I had first crossed their path some twenty years before that. Five years on, the nature of the project has changed, but much of the original challenge remains. I had seen my role, offering services to GiGL to process some old data, as not too demanding. However, when space in the Union …

In London, we will need to build many new homes, schools and other public facilities to meet housing demand and support continued population growth. How can we factor London’s biodiversity into the densification of the city? London’s planning system, which aims to provide the housing and other …

When I was a kid and teenager, I spent a lot of time looking for fossils, fungi and berries. It didn’t occur to me at the time to try and put a label on everything, beyond whether it was useful or edible. It was much later that I became interested in identifying what I saw around me and then in counting it and recording it. When I moved to London I was fascinated by the quantity and variety of wildlife I discovered in an urban environment.

Once a year, local environmental records centres (LERCs) have the opportunity to meet at their association’s (ALERC) conference. As we all operate in separate geographic locations, it is great to come together to share learning and inspiration. This year, it was also good to celebrate our new status as accredited members of ALERC.

Identifying areas of the highest environmental value is useful for many borough planning initiatives. One good way of doing this is by mapping green and ecological corridors. The London Borough of Redbridge approached GiGL in 2014 to discuss modelling green corridors in the borough.

This year’s NBN conference, held in Edinburgh, was titled “Going with the flow: supporting the NBN data flow pathway”. This was a very timely topic for GiGL, as we have just written our own Data Flow Strategy. So, we happily joined the recording community for two days of talks and workshops centred around where biological data comes from, verification of records and the movement of data.

This year, Greenspace Information for Greater London CIC celebrates both a 10th and a 20th anniversary. London’s Biological Recording Project, which formed the roots of the current day GiGL, was initiated in May 1996 when Bridge House Estates (via the City Bridge Trust) provided three years’ worth of grant funding to build a partnership and run pilot projects. Since then, GiGL has vastly expanded …